Drought stress is one of the major abiotic stresses in agriculture worldwide. The study was carried out to investigate the

effect of drought stress on carbohydrate content in drought tolerant and susceptible chickpea genotypes. A field

experiment was carried out at Student’s Instructional Farm in a randomized block design with three replications and in the

laboratory of Department of Biochemistry during Rabi season of 2013-14 and 2014-15. The tolerant variety accumulated

more carbohydrate content than the sensitive one. Results showed that carbohydrate content ranged between 61.51 to

66.64 per cent in the year 2013-14 and 61.44 to 66.53 per cent in the year 2014-15. First year experiment recorded highest

carbohydrate content in tolerant genotype K 850 (66.64%) and the lowest value were recorded in susceptible genotype

PUSA 372 (61.51 %). In the second year experiment maximum carbohydrate content was recorded in K 850 (66.53%)

whereas, the lowest value was noticed in PUSA 372 (61.44 %). Analysis of the data indicates that genotypes diferred

significant with regard to carbohydrate content in both of the years. So, carbohydrate in stress condition can be used as

markers for selection of drought tolerant genotypes.

Key Words: Chickpea, Carbohydrate, Drought stress, Genotype, Tolerant