Author(s): Kajal Jankar, SS Mane, ST Ingle, PV Jadhav and MW Marawar

Abstract: Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), one of the key pulse crop, grown extensively in India as a rainfed and irrigated crop. Wilt is a devastating disease in chickpea production among several biotic constraints. A investigation of the geographic distribution and racial complexity of isolates of Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. ciceri (Foc) representing various agro-climatic zones of India was carried out at molecular level. The potential of these molecular markers to assess the genetic variability of Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. ciceri was examined using DNA-based Universal Rice Primers (URP) and Sequence Related Amplified Polymorphism (SRAP) markers. The present study provided new information on these pathogens based on their races and their dominant existence in this region that has not been reported before. The isolates were categorised into six categories using the Unweighted paired group method with arithmetic average analysis (UPGMA). The genetic similarities coefficient values from the combined data of the URP primer and SRAP primer ranged from 0.4944 to 0.8782 across 40 isolates of F. oxysporum f. sp. ciceri. There is heterogeneity in the majority of Indian populations representing several races of the pathogen, and these isolates are divided into different clusters individually. The present racial profiling of the Indian population of pathogen and its distribution pattern is completely novel. The present race profiling for the Indian population of the pathogen and its distribution pattern is entirely new. The knowledge generated in this study could be utilized in resistance breeding programme.

DOI: 10.33545/26174693.2024.v8.i6e.1340