Autumn sown chickpea compared to spring sown crop, produces more seed yield. One of the constraints in autumn sowing at the cold regions, is cold injury. To investigate cold resistance and find cold tolerant genotypes for autumn sowing in cold areas of Iran, ten advanced genotypes of chickpea were evaluated in a Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications in Maragheh Agricultural Research Station, during 2003-05 cropping seasons. Cold hardiness among the chickpea genotypes were measured by examining the alive and dead seedlings after being exposed to natural winter and spring cold weather and expressed in percentage. The absolute minimum temperature during 2003-04 and 2004-05 years were –15 and –22.5 °C with snow cover and –10 and –7.5 °C without snow cover, respectively. Combined analysis of variance showed that there were significant differences among genotypes for 100 seeds weight, plant height, days to 50% flowering, days to 50% maturity, number of pods per plant and primary shoots. Resistant chickpea genotypes (91-95% winter hardiness) comprised only 10% frequency percentage and tolerant genotypes (71-90% winter hardiness) 70 percent. Ggenotype FLIP 00-78C (with 91% cold hardiness as resistant genotype) was produced the highest seed yield(1507 Kgha-1). Seed yield had a significant and positive correlation (r = 0.655**) with cold hardiness percentage, and highly resistant or resistant genotypes produced seed yield more than total mean. On the whole, three genotypes FLIP 00-78C, FLIP 00-75C and FLIP
96-90C with cold tolerance rate 3 and less than 3, cold hardiness percentage more than 83% and seed yield more than 1190 Kgha-1, were identified as superior genotypes.