abstract In order to evaluate agronomical characteristics of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) cold tolerant genotypes in fall sowing, a field trial was carried out on 2002-2003, 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 at the experimental field of College of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. This study was performed in rainfed conditions with only two times irrigation at planting stage and 20 days after that. In the first year (2002-2003), 46 chickpea genotypes (30 cold tolerant accessions resulted from previous studies at Mashhad and some genotypes from ICARDA and Canada) were planted based on Randomised Complete Block Design. Regarding to complete loss because of cold injury in this year, in the next two years by adding of 106 other accessions, totally, 152 chickpea genotypes with 4 checks were evaluated based on the Augmented Preliminarily Design. In each year, genotypes were categorised according to their seed yields to some groups, and some statistical indices such as mean, standard deviation and range were calculated for each group. There were significant differences (p≤0.05) among genotypes with each other and with checks about yield, yield components and plant height. In the second year (2003-2004), the range of seed yield among the first yield group (39.5% of all genotypes) was from 251 to 622 g.m-2, while in the third year (2004-2005) this range among the first yield group (20% of all genotypes) was from 254 to 442 g.m-2. Finally, 20 chickpea genotypes with the most yields for each year were selected and introduced for continuing of studies.

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