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