Present status on variability and management of Ascochyta rabiei infecting chickpea

Ascochyta Blight (AB) of chickpea caused by the fungus Ascochyta rabiei, is a major disease in regions of cool, cloudy and humid weather conditions prevailing during the crop season. It causes huge economic losses especially during flowering and podding stage. The pathogen survives through seed infection and crop debris from season to season. Even though lot of work has been done on pathological and molecular studies but physiological specialization with respect to racial types, pathotypes (I, II, III, IV) and mating types (MAT1-1 and MAT1-2), climatic factors in disease development, genetic and physiological resistance mechanism, host plant resistance and components used in the integrated disease management has not been clearly established. Seed treatment with fungicides and bio agents is not sufficient to manage the disease but further intensive studies are needed on variability, factors supporting for infection and host mechanism to suppress the infection process and also utilization of molecular markers in breeding for disease resistance. In this review, we have tried to cover the loss and distribution of disease, existence of fungal diversity, epidemiology, host plant resistance and molecular breeding approaches for disease resistance for future research on AB.