Twenty chickpea cultivars, composed of two Iranian (Kaka and Pirooz) and 18 from ICARDA, were studied under two irrigation regimes at Miandoab Agriculltural Experiment Station with mean annual percipitation of 320 mm. The experimental design was a split-plot with four replications. Levels of irrigations were assigned for the main plots and cultivars for the subplots. Seeds were hill planted in 2 *2 meter plots with 5 planting rows on March 19th, 1993. The effects of irrigation levels and genetic variation between cukivars for 13 agronomic traits were calculated and analyzed by path analysis.Complemetary irrigations (during pre-flowering and pod filling growth stages) affected most of the traits positively .But, their effects on seed yield, plant height and number of secondary branches were higher than on other traits. Complementary irrigation considerably enhanced seed yield by about 600 kgfha. Number of days to flowering and days to maturity showed significant interaction with cultivars . The F test and cultivars mean comparison showed a significant varietal differences for most of the traits studied. As a whole, cultivars ICC-90024, ICCV-89204,ICC-90023,ICC-90033 and ICC-90016,by producing 3456.63, 3165.31, 3121.43, 3065.31 and 2994.9 kilogram seeds per hectare , were among the higher yielding cultivars, respectively. Correlation coefficients of days to flowering , days to maturity, and plant height with yield were negatively significant but correlation of other traits with yield were positively significant .Path analysis showed that 100 seed
- weight, number of pods per plant and number of seeds per pod (the main yield components )had a high direct effects on grain yield. Number of primary branches had a positive effects on straw yield per plant. Plant height affected the number o1 pods per plant negatively, while the effect of days to maturity on the number of pods per plant was positive.
)