The present investigation was carried out with fifty one genotypes of chickpea to analyze the genetic variability, heritability, genetic advance, correlation and path analysis for ten quantitative traits. The study was carried out at Crop Research Centre (CRC) of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel University of Agriculture and Technology, Meerut (U.P.) during Rabi season 2017-18. Material was planted in randomized block design in 3 rows plot of 4 meter length, with row to row and plant to plant spacing of 30 cm and 10 cm, respectively. The observations were recorded on five randomly selected plants from each genotype in each replication for the ten characters viz.,days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height, number of branches per plant, number of pods per plant, number of seeds per pod, 100 seed weight, biological yield per plant, harvest index and grain yield per plant. All the 51 diverse genotypes of chickpea exhibited significant differences for all the traits under study, thus, it is implied that there was reasonably sufficient variability in the experimental material. The phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) and genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) was found to be high for grain yield per plant, number of pods per plant and biological yield per plant. High heritability coupled with high genetic advance observed for grain yield per plant, number of pods per plant, biological yield per plant, 100 seed weight, harvest index, number of seeds per pod and plant height, hence direct selection of genotypes can be done through these characters for further improvement of genotypes of chickpea. In general, the genotypic correlation coefficient values were higher than the phenotypic values. This indicated that strong intrinsic associations were somewhat masked at phenotypic level due to environmental effects. Grain yield per plant had highly significant positive correlation with number of pods per plant, biological yield per plant, number of seeds per pod, harvest index, number of branches per plant and 100 seed weight at genotypic and phenotypic level. Hence, improvement of grain yield per plant can be achieved by improvement of these characters. Among the various traits studied biological yield per plant had high positive direct effect followed by harvest index at both genotypic and phenotypic levels on grain yield per plant. This indicated that biological yield per plant and harvest index are most important characters in influencing grain yield per plant. Grain yield per plant could be improved by selection based on these characters.

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