Relationship Analysis of Phenology, Stress Tolerance, and Mean Productivity in Wilt and Cold Stressed Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) Following Synthetic PGRs Application

To understand the phenotypic response to mitigate stress tolerance for achieving maximum mean productivity, a comparative study of four synthetic PGRs—Abscisic Acid (ABA), Naphthyl Acetic Acid (NAA), Salicylic Acid (SA), and Fusaric Acid (FA)—was conducted as a pot experiment against artificially inoculated Fusarium oxysporum (a wilt pathogen) and cold exposure in four chickpea varieties. Additionally, the relationship between traits and PGRS application was looked at to evaluate their role in the stress tolerance mechanism. The results showed that ABA at 5 and 2 ppm was effective in delaying flowering, therefore extending the vegetative development phase in plants. In this way, flowering promotes stress tolerance while evading the damaging impacts of wilting and cold. This resulted in a lower percentage of wilt and a reduced incidence of cold compared to all other treatments, which raised mean productivity. The use of ABA at 5 and 2 ppm has been shown to positively correlate with both the prolongation of vegetative development and the delay of flowering. But fusaric acid (FA), a fungal toxin, is what caused early flowering, which allowed the flower to coincide with the development of wilt and cold. The occurrence of wilt at seedling and cold during flowering accelerated the incidence of wilt and cold, which led to a reduced mean productivity after giving fusaric acid (FA) @ 10 and 20 ppm. According to the investigation, the application of fusaric acid (FA) at 10 and 20 ppm was found to be positively and highly correlated with an increase in the incidence of wilt and cold and consequently negatively correlated with the mechanism possessed by ABA at 5 and 2 ppm.