Fungal disease management in chickpea: Current status and future prospects

Abstract

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is one of the most important leguminous crops grown predominantly in tropical and temperate areas. The beneficial effects of chickpea on soil health and human health are well recognized. The area under chickpea production in India is 9.6 million ha with an average production of 8.8 million tons. Yield of chickpea is largely affected by exposure to both abiotic and biotic stresses. It has been observed that insects and diseases cause around 50-100% yield loss in chickpea in temperate regions. Among various diseases caused by a variety of pathogens, fungal diseases have shown to have devastating effects on the chickpea yield. Among various fungal diseases, the diseases caused by Fusarium oxysporum (fusarium wilt) and Ascochyta rabiei (Ascochyta blight) are the most common root and foliar diseases, respectively, causing severe loss to crop yield. Identification of pathogen, variation in genome and pathology, development of disease-resistant varieties, and organizing the resistant genes in different regions play an important role in fungal disease management. Implication of conventional methods is both time-consuming and slow process. Development of new genomic tools and resources aid the employment of genomics selection in improvement of chickpea. This will provide greater insight to the breeding program to work with high precision and accuracy to develop resistant chickpea cultivars.