I - --ii

Stop-Gap Foliar Protection
When a cultivar loses its effectiveness in resistance, despite all efforts to maintain
the gains of resistance breeding, the best alternative to control the disease
until new sources of resistance are idcntified is to use fungicides as foliar pro~ectants.
Other disease management practices such as change in the cropping
pattern to meet such situations may not ".popular witn farmers because of other
problems.
Short-Terin AlteruLafive to Rcsist"s i Cviivars
Several good sources of resistance in both desi and kabuli background have been
identified and efforts are under way to develop resistant and high-yielding cultivars.
However, development of resistant cultivars with all desirable characters
for different geograp ic regions is a time consuming p'rocess. In countries where
the losses due to blight are heavy and no resistant cultivars are available, fungicidcs
as foliar protectants have to be used until resistant cultivars are developed.
The greater demand for this legume and the remunerative prices should make
the use of fungicides feasible.
In the past, considerable work on the use of fungicides as foliar sprays to
control blight has been done. Some of the fungicides that were found to be
effective recently were Zineb, Ferbam, Maneb, Captae and fDaconil (Oiarounik
1980; Puerta Romero 1964; Retig and Tobolsky 1967; Se, Nycirck et al 1977;
Solel and Kostrinski 1964; Vir and Grewal 1974bi. Urder highly favorable
conditions for disease development, none of these fungicides, even with as many
as 12 applications, was found to give sufficient protection across the seasons at
ICARDA. There is a great need to search for more cfficient systemic fungicides
which may be more economical to use. This is all the more essential as the
development of resistant cultivars for certain specific locations or races of the
pathogen may take a very long time, or may even not be possible in the near
future.
Summary
The most ideal way of controlling ascochyta blight of chickpea is through the use
of cultivars with durable resistance. In the absence of such resistance, fungicides,
in addition to as seed dressers, when applied with genctypes having vertical
resistance may help in lengthening their life and thus stabilize production. Fungicides
that could completely eradicate the blight pathogen from the infected
chickpea seed are available. Under experimental cbnditions, quite a few fungi­
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