Synthetic PGR's Modify Phenology, Stress Tolerance and Mean Productivity in Wilt and Cold Stressed Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)

At the Experimental Field of Herbal Garden Department of Plant Physiology JNKVV Jabalpur, the experiments were conducted in the academic years 2020–20221 and 2021–2022. In a pot experiment, a comparison of the effects of four synthetic PGRs—Abscisic Acid (ABA), Naphthyl Acetic Acid (NAA), Salicylic Acid (SA), and Fusaric Acid (FA)—against four varieties of chickpeas that had been intentionally inoculated with the wilt pathogen Fusarium oxysporum and exposed to low temperatures. This study sought to determine the phenophasic response to reduce stress tolerance in order to achieve the highest possible mean production. The findings demonstrated that applying ABA to plants at concentrations of 5 and 2 ppm was successful in extending the vegetative development period by delaying flowering, allowing flowering to avoid the detrimental impacts of wilt and cold and so promoting stress tolerance. This resulted in reduced percentage of wilt and cold incidence as compared to all other treatments, leading to higher mean productivity. However, Fusaric acid (FA), a fungal toxin responsible for early in flowering that allowed flower to coincide with wilt and cold occurrence timing. Flowering is also very sensitive to cold stress therefor occurrence of wilt at seedling and cold at flowering accelerated the incidence of wilt and cold, which resulted in lower mean productivity after applying Fusaric acid (FA) @ 10 and 20 ppm.