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4
including stunt virus (pea leaf roll virus), root-rots and wilts, should remain with
ICRISAT. This sharing has again proved effective. To help us in our work here
at ICARDA on ascochyta blight, ICRISAT had stationed a pathologist from
their core program for 2 - 3 months a year both in 1980 and 1981.
Since the main theme of our workshop is winter planting in relation to ascochyta
blight, may I take a few minutes, Mr. Chairman, just to review briefly the
history of this. The first work on winter planting of chickpeas was conducted not
by ICARDA but by its forerunner, the Arid Land Agricultural Development
Program (ALAD) which worked very much in this area,with support from the
Ford Foundation. This first work on winter sowing was done in 1974/75 in
Lebanon at Kfardan and here the object was just to test out whether there was
enough hardiness in chickpea to stand the winter and to find out if the lack of
cold hardiness in chickpeas had been the reason for the local farmers to grow the
chickpea as a spring-sown rather than as a winter-sown crop. Well, I was not here
at that time but I gather, to the surprise of all concerned, that all the material
survived the winter as far as cold was concerrd. The preliminary results from
these trials suggested that the winter sowing might be followed by a yield
advantage of the order of 50 or even 100% from the longer growing season, better
moisture supply, etc. However, following our first steps towards establishing the
station at Aleppo, in the hazy twilight period between the end of the ALAD and
the beginning of ICARDA, nurseries of chickpea were sown on the University of
Aleppo farm by the courtesy of the Dean and his staff at Muslimieh and there it
became obvious why there was preference for spring sowing. The winter sown
crops were very severely attacked by ascochyta blight and it was evident that a
heavy attack of ascochyta could destroy the crop. The winter sowing for that
reason was a risk which a farmer was rightly not prepared to take. This triggered
off a desire for research on the control of aszochyta blight and a fair amount of
work with fungicides was carried out. All that could be shown was that they
could work, but were not the real answer. What was needed was the genetic
resistance if the winter planting of chickpeas was to become a reality on farmers'
fields. And work began at once on identifying sources of resistance. I am glad-to
learn that to date several sources of resistance have been identified in the
chickpea germplasm collections maintained at ICRISAT and ICARDA.
Several of the resistant genotypes have been tested in International Disease
Screening Nurseries which began in 1978-79. And the resistance sources have
been more precisely identified which stand up across a number of the locations.
There are, however, growing fears that a number of strains or patlotypes of this
disease organism may exist and this will have to be taken into account. While you
may appear to have got resistance across the locations, you have got to be quite
sure that you are coping up with all the strains of the disease that may be there.
So on a fairly sound research base,the genetic improvement of chickpeas with
respect to ascochyta blight is now well under way here. And this work has gone
from the research stations to the farmers' fields.