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Screening Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) for Resistance to Wilt (Fusarium oxysporum F.sp. Ciceri) under Field Condition

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), is the second most important food legume crop of the world, while it stands first among pulses in India. Chickpea seeds are used for both human and animal consumption, serves as an important source of dietary protein (Jendoubi, et al., 2017). For the people of developing country (especially in South Asia), it is a cheap source of protein (20-23%), high levels of carbohydrates (60.7%) and dietary fibres (17.4%). Globally chickpea is cultivated in an area of 12.00 mha, with a production of 10.90 mt and an average yield of 913 kg /ha. India is the largest producer of chickpea accounting for about 68% of world chickpea production.


Introduction
Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), is the second most important food legume crop of the world, while it stands first among pulses in India. Chickpea seeds are used for both human and animal consumption, serves as an important source of dietary protein (Jendoubi, et al., 2017). For the people of developing country (especially in South Asia), it is a cheap source of protein (20-23%), high levels of carbohydrates (60.7%) and dietary fibres (17.4%). Globally chickpea is cultivated in an area of 12.00 mha, with a production of 10.90 mt and an average yield of 913 kg /ha. India is the largest producer of chickpea accounting for about 68% of world chickpea production.
In India, is cultivated in an area of 8.25 mha, with a production of 7.33 mt and productivity of 896 kg/ha. Karnataka ranks fifth in the cultivation of chickpea with an area of 10.41 lakh ha, production of 6.74 lakh tonnes and productivity of 718 kg/ha (Anon., 2015).
In Karnataka, Kalaburgi ranks first followed by Vijayapur, Bidar, Gadag, and Raichur. During past three decades, a significant change in the scenario of chickpea area and production in India was noticed. It was mainly due to the infestation of major diseases.
Hence, an effort was made to evaluate 129 chickpea lines during rabi 2018 at Zonal Agricultural Research Station, kalaburagi, Karnataka, to elucidate information on disease reaction of these lines and to identify promising chickpea genotypes for disease resistance which attributes to good seed yield.
So far, the chickpea crop is infested by 172 pathogens (67 fungi, 22 viruses, 3 bacteria, 80 nematodes and phytoplasma) all over the world (Nene et al., 1996). Among them, some of the pathogens have the potential to devastate the crop. One among such disease is Fusarium wilt.
The disease manifests as mortality of young seedlings i.e. whole seedling collapses (within 25 to 30 days after sowing) leads to wilting or death of plants and retain their dull-green colour (slightly yellowish-green)while stem retain green colour where as normal healthy plants turn to straw colour. wilt can be confused with other diseases, if not examined carefully.
In adult plants i.e. at flowering stages, the phytotoxin produced by the pathogen causes wilting and leaf burning. The roots of the wilted plants do not show any external rotting symptoms but when split vertically, dark brown discoloration of internal xylem vessels was observed (Nene et al., 1991). Haware and Nene, (1980) were reported that the early wilting reduced the seed number/ plant which causes significant yield losses than late wilting.
The seeds harvested from wilted plants are lighter, wrinkled and duller than those from healthy plants. The yield losses due to wilting vary between 10% and 100% depending on the agro-climatic conditions (Grewal and Pal, 1970).

Materials and Methods
The study consists of 129 chickpea National Crossing Programme (NCP) lines including resistant (WR 315) and susceptible (JG 62) checks and these were screened for wilt disease resistance in 30 year old wilt sick plot available at zonal agricultural research station Kalaburagi during rabi-2018.
The experiment was conducted in randomized block design with two replications. Each line was planted in a two rows of 2 m length with 30 cm and 10 cm as inter and intra-row spacing. The data on disease incidence was recorded on 30, 45 and 60 days after sowing to calculate PDI (per cent disease incidence).
Then the lines were scored according to their PDI and were categorized into resistant, moderately resistant, moderately susceptible, Susceptible and highly susceptible. The pattern of disease symptom of all the lines observed during the investigation was same.
A young seedling turns to yellowing within 3 weeks of sowing called as early wilt, which was the unique pattern of disease symptom of all the lines observed during the investigation. Since, it was mainly observed during the vegetative stage i.e. infected plant show typical wilting i.e. drooping of whole plant. Thus seedlings will be died with green stem. While, late wilt will be confirmed through their roots where the external appearance of roots shows no sign of rotting, when its split vertically, xylem vessels show brown to black discoloration throughout the vein and plants are difficult to uproot.
The level of resistance and/or susceptibility of each line was determined by using 1-9 rating scale (Anonymous, 2014) (Table 3). Percent disease incidence was calculated using the formulae given below:

Results and Discussion
The study was attempted during rabi 2018 in order to check the disease reaction of 129 chickpea NCP lines against wilt. Among studied lines, 34 lines were resistant, 34 lines moderately resistant, 26 lines moderately susceptible, 29 lines susceptible and 6 lines were found highly susceptible. The resistant check (WR 315) and susceptible check (JG 62) were sown along with our 129 NCP lines for comparative evaluation of resistance and susceptibility of new NCP lines. The resistant lines recorded PDI 1-10 %, moderately resistant lines 11-20%, moderately susceptible lines 21-30 %, susceptible lines 31-50% and highly susceptible lines 51-100%. The resistant and susceptible check lines recorded the PDI 5.35 %, 100% respectively.
The disease free lines i.e resistant and moderately resistant lines can be used in breeding programs to incorporate the resistant genes. Further, it was found that the resistant lines are well adopted for local climate and can be used to develop disease resistance.   (1)  These results are inconformity with the investigations of several researchers Thaware D.S. et al., (2018), Kumar et al., (2012), Korde, (2011), Mandhare et al., (2011), Ahmed (2010 and Patil (2010) have screened number of chickpea genotypes and identified promising cultivars against the wilt.