Cultural, Morphological and Molecular Characterization of Fusarium Oxysporum f.sp. Ciceris Inciting Wilt of Chickpea

Thirty two isolates of Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. ciceris (Foc) were collected from six districts of Andhra Pradesh (A.P) and three districts of Telangana. Based on wilting % in pathogenicity test, the isolates were grouped into three categories. All the isolates differed in cultural characters like mycelium colour, margin, texture, pigmentation and morphological characters like macro conidia, micro conidia length, width and chlamydospores diameter. There was no correlation between cultural and morphological characters of Foc isolates except three isolates (Foc-6, Foc-12 and Foc-17). These three isolates have white mycelium, cream colour pigmentation, slow radial growth and highly pathogenic (100% wilt incidence) in nature. Sporulation ability and radial growth of all isolates were also measured. All the isolates exhibited genetic variation in RAPD banding pattern and three major clusters (I, II and III) were found in the dendrogram. Maximum genetic similarity of 80.3% was observed between Foc-27 and Foc-28 isolates.