干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Chickpea Blight is a devastating disease of chickpea (Cicer areitinum L.) worldwide caused by Ascochyta rabiei (Pass.) Lab. The disease is more disastrous particularly in long cool and humid environmental spells. It results in huge losses by wiping off all the crop in the desert areas whenever hit its epidemics. To manage this disease, different management strategies are practiced. However, breeding resistance to the host is the best and environmentally safe strategy. During 1970s, the loss of host resistance against the pathogen was reported, so extra ordinary efforts were started by the scientists to enhance the host tolerance towards the pathogen. In this way, relatively simple field screening techniques were followed for breeding and identification of new resistant genotypes. The review sums up the efforts regarding host breeding against chickpea blight involving large scale field screening experiments as well as recent marker assisted breeding using the molecular mapping and QTLs against the different strains of pathogen. Moreover, the important aspects covering the related knowledge of the pathogen, its biology, variability, perpetuation, characteristics and factor affecting the disease establishment have also been summarized.