Sangita Sahni

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum) is one of the world's major legume crops and suffers substantial damage from wilt disease incited by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. ciceri (Padwick) with yield loss over 60 per cent. It is an important soil borne plant pathogen and is difficult to manage by application of chemical. Moreover, the chemical control is costly and leads to residual effect. In this book, an integrated approach using host plant resistance and integration of three components i.e., cultural (vermicompost amendment), chemical (ZnSO4 and Salicylic acid) and biological (seed bacterization with Pseudomonas spp.) were contemplated to manage this disease more effectively.

Urdbean (Vigna mungo (L.) Hepper) is an important pulse crop grown worldwide. MYMV is an important disease of urdbean and causes huge losses. The urdbean crop can be protected by seed treatment with imidacloprid 17.8 SL @ 5 ml/kg seed along with two foliar spray with imidacloprid 17.8 SL @ 0.03%, which recorded 24.73 % disease reduction over control and brought out significant increase in the growth and yield parameters assessed resulted in maximum seed yield (2.68 g per plant). This treatment found to be cost effective and profitable among all other treatments tested and recorded highest net returns with ICBR of 1:11.40. To combat this disease, eighty two urdbean genotypes were screened against MYMV. Four genotypes i.e. VBN (BG) 7, IPU 2-43, KUG 586, & KUG 503 were found to be superior for seed yield as well as resistant to MYMV.