Sorghum Diseases in India

more than a decade ago, rust would not appear
until the boot-leaf or grain-filling stage of the
pearl millet plants. In the late 1970s, however,
young pearl millet seedlings were found to be
susceptible to rust.
Speakers at the 1977 International Pearl Millet
Workshop acknowledged that rust received
the lowest priority and attracted the least attention
in the millet-growing states of Punjab,
Haryana, Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh. Failure
to recognize the importance of this disease
was further demonstrated when only a single
rust paper was presented during the 1986 International
Pearl Millet Workshop 9 years later.
An acceptable level of rust resistance has not
yet been found in pearl millet cultivars. Of the
614 entries tested in the All India Coordinated
Pearl Millet Improvement Project (AICPMIP),
only 32 were found to have some resistance to
rust. In the field, Cobb's modified rust-rating
scale is being used to assess rust incidence.
There is a need to develop a rating scale that
includes seedling infection.
Resistance based on a single dominant gene,
designated Rppl, has been discovered recently at
ICRISAT (Andrews et al. 1985), opening the possibility
of incorporating adequate rust resistance.
Recommendations
A major thrust in the present management of
pearl millet diseases appears to depend on the
exploitation of host-plant resistance. Development
of lines with multiple-disease resistance
has attracted the attention of several workers
and attempts have been made to identify such
lines since 1985 (Andrews et al. 1985). Although
computer-aided prediction programs are available
for a few crop diseases, pearl millet pathology
programs are seriously deficient of such
technology.
Genotype deployment should be looked into
seriously, instead of relegating susceptible lines
permanently to the background.
A combination of computer-aided multiple-regression
analysis, genotype deployment, and
multiple-disease resistance will give pearl millet
pathology a new impetus and take the management
of pearl millet disease through a new realm.
126
References
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A single dominant gene for rust resistance in
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