1. Introduction: In semi-arid environments such as Iran drought and heat are two of the major environmental factors limit crop establishment and subsequently production in many crops including chickpeas particularly in dry land farming systems. Therefore, early sowing in autumn is one of the ideas to tackle this problem in order to use more rainfall and avoidance of drought and heat stresses (Ganjali et al., 2008; Ganjali and Nezami, 2008). The aim of this study was to determine the possibility and the potential of autumn sowing of chickpeas grown in Iran. 2. Materials and Methods: The experiment was carried out in a Completely Randomised Blocks Design with four replicates and three chickpea seed lots in two sowing seasons (autumn and spring) from mid-November 2007 to late June 2008 in Mashhad, Iran. Emergence, the number of pods per plant, number of seeds per pod, weight of one hundred seeds and yield were determined. 3. Results: Autumn sowing gave a higher yield of 2250 kg/ha (average of three seed lots) in compare of 1080 kg/ha in the spring sowing. Though emergence percentages in autumn sowing was lower than the spring sowing. 4. Conclusions: Cold and unfavorable conditions in autumn sowing resulted a lower emergence but provided a longer period of the growing season to the plants, using more rain fed in spring and avoidance of the drought in summer resulting a higher yield due to having a higher number of pod per plant, seed per pod and even larger seeds.

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