Abstract
The study included seven parents of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) : Local, F85, F97-73c, Dijla, Marakishi, IPA69 and F97-158.The parents were crossed in a diallel fashion (excluding reciprocals) .The seeds of parents and F1’s were sown during the 2005-2006 season in the field of the College of Agric. & Forestry at Mosul University to estimate gene action. The additive variance (D) and dominance variances (H1 , H2) were significant for all characters but the dominance variance was greater than the additive variance values for all characters excepted 100-seeds weight. Dominance effect (h2), as the algebraic sum over all loci in heterozygous phase in all crosses, were significant for all characters except no. of pods per plant and biological yield .The values of average degree of dominance showed that over dominance effect controlled all characters except for 100-seeds weight . The ratio KD/KR was greater than 1 for all the characters. Values of K were less than 1 for all characters except no. of 90% maturation. High broad sense heritability ranged from (0.72-0.91) for all characters. Narrow sense heritability was high for 100-seeds weigh (0.62), and low for biological yield (0.18) and moderate for other characters (0.21-0.50).
