Screening of Chickpea genotypes from different agro-climatic areas against Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. ciceris (race 3) using morphological and molecular marker

Abstract

Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. ciceris (FOC), an extremely destructive pathogen, infects chickpea plants leading to over 100% losses. Although using chemicals like Carbendazim and Mancozeb the disease can be controlled but it drastically affects the soil's natural flora and fauna. Also, the emergence of new FOC races threatens the current genotypes. Many efforts have been made towards improving chickpea genotypes through breeding and selection, but the situation has not been improved over the last 2 decades. The current research uses pot screening and molecular-based approaches to screen out the resistant chickpea cultivars. In that view, the present research uses 16 chickpea genotypes collected from diverse agro-climatic areas and checked against FOC race-3. After the pot screening and ANOVA (P<0.001), the genotypes were categorized as highly Resistant (C 235, HC 1), resistant (GNG 2477, PHULeG 0517, GNG 2171, HC 7, PHULe G 0127), susceptible (ICCV 10) and highly susceptible (PUSA 547, RSG 931, RSG 888, ICCV 512, CSJ 513, ICCV 6). In Marker-assisted selection (MAS), the DNA of genotypes was subjected to PCR with STMS markers TA-96 and TA-27. The results revealed that the genotypes ICCV 512, C 235, GNG 2171, ICCV 10, HC 7, PHULe G 0127 and HC 1 were resistant. These results are significant for selecting resistant genotypes and can be utilized in the future validation and development of more wilt-resistant chickpea genotypes. Our results based on pot-screening and molecular-based datasets suggested a more reliable identification system for screening of FOC resistance cultivar inhibiting, which can help narrow down the selection.