Drought stress severely reduces plant growth and productivity, posing a significant threat to food security. In chickpea, often cultivated under rainfed conditions, productivity can also be decreased by over 50% due to this stress. Given the importance of drought effects during seedling establishment and vegetative growth, this study aimed to assess the radicle and epicotyl growth responses to drought in 40 desi chickpea genotypes during germination. The genotypes were categorized based on their drought tolerance, and the reproducibility of their responses during the vegetative stage was assessed using biochemical and developmental traits. The first experiment was conducted in a growth chamber in plastic containers filled with a special mixture of fine sand and perlite at 10% and 40% water holding capacity (WHC). In the second experiment, 12 selected genotypes were grown in pots with 60% WHC for 14 days, before being exposed to progressive water deficit. After 35 days, we measured leaf biochemical parameters, as well as root and shoot growth. The genotypes exhibited significant differences under stress and non-stress conditions during first experiment in terms of radicle and epicotyl growth, which were categorized by clustering and PCA analysis. In the second experiment, MCC416 and MCC584 genotypes demonstrated the highest total root length and lowest increase in malondialdehyde content in response to drought stress, and based on second PCA, they were identified as drought tolerance. The results suggest that enhanced biochemicals and root growth traits are effective indicators of drought stress impact, ultimately contributing to the resilience of chickpea genotypes under such condition. Markedly, genotypes selected from the first experiment showed relatively similar response in second experiment. Although, MCC416 and MCC584 displayed superior drought tolerance in both growth stages, further investigations under field conditions are necessary to determine to what extent the drought tolerance behaviors observed at different developmental stages are interrelated.

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