Management of Fungal Pathogens in Pulses: Current Status and Future Challenges

Pulses have played a major role in human diet and are considered a rich source of proteins. But, the major constraints in achieving the yield of pulses are the occurrences of various diseases and pests. Hence, there is a need to understand major fungal pathogens and their management strategies for sustainable agriculture. The major pulse crops in India and other Asian countries are bengal gram, pigeon pea, black gram, green gram, lentil and peas, which are attacked by several pathogens that cause considerable crop damage. Bengal gram is affected mainly by wilt (Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. ciceri), blight (Mycosphaerella pinodes) and rust (Uromyces ciceris-arietini). The main diseases of pigeon pea are wilt (Fusarium oxysporum) and Phytophtora stem blight (Phytophthora drechsleri f. sp. cajani). Powdery mildew (Erysiphe polygoni) and rust (Uromyces vicia-fabae) are the most important diseases affecting the production of pea. This volume offers details like symptoms, distribution, pathogens associated, predisposing factors and epidemiology, sources of resistance and holistic management of diseases with particular reference to those of economic importance. Several minor diseases of lentil, green gram and of black gram are discussed with their detailed and updated information. This volume provides pooled information regarding the management of major fungal phytopathogens affecting pulses. 

Bhim Pratap Singh Dr. Bhim Pratap Singh working as Assistant Professor in the Department of Biotechnology, Aizawl, Mizoram University, India, has more than 10 years of research experience in the field of molecular microbiology, biocontrol of plant diseases, mushroom diversity, the biosynthetic potential of actinobacteria and fungi associated with medicinal plants. He has worked for the last 10 years on microbial diversity and explored the microbial population associated with medicinal plants and rhizospheric soils. His group has documented the wild mushroom from Mizoram, Northeast India. He has completed seven externally funded research projects on screening and characterization of endophytic actinobacteria and fungi associated with medicinal plants and the rhizospheric soils funded by several funding agencies. Dr. Singh has organized several international and national conferences and seminars including India-UK scientific seminar jointly funded by the British Council and the Department of Science and Technology (DST), New Delhi. Dr. Singh has been awarded several honors like the young scientist award in 2014 from Scientific and Education Research Society, India and Best achievement award for the contribution to the Asian PGPR society, USA. Dr. Singh is serving ad editors of several reputed peer-reviewed scientific journals like Frontiers in Microbiology, Plos ONE, etc., and he is an active member of several national and international professional bodies like Asian PGPR Society, Association of Microbiologists of India, MSI, ISCA, etc.. His group has published 51 research papers in SCI journals and 18 book chapters in the books published by national and international publishers. Dr. Singh has also edited six books published from Springer and Elsevier publications. Dr. Singh has filed six patents on several applications of endophytic actinobacteria in plant growth promotion. Dr. Singh has guided 4 Ph.D. students and 3 M.Phil students till date.

Garima Singh Dr. GarimaSingh has completed her doctorate in 2018 from Mizoram University, India in plant sciences and worked on the pharmaceutical potential of selected traditional medicinal plants collected from Northeast India. Dr. Singh has 5 years of research experience and has published several research papers in national and international journals having high impact factor like Scientific reports, BMC complementary and alternative medicine, frontiers in plant sciences, etc. Dr. Singh has awarded for her work by several agencies while presenting her research work in India and abroad.

Krishna Kumar Dr. Krishna Kumar presently working as Dean, PanditDeendayalUpadhyay College of Horticulture and Forestry, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa, Samastipur-848125, Bihar, India. He worked as Post Doctoral Research Associate at Unit of Virology, IARI, New Delhi, Assistant Professor (Plant Pathology) at SK University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, Jammu and then served as Senior Scientist and Principal Scientist at Central Island Agricultural Research Institute, Port Blair. He also served as Principal Scientist at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India.  He has also worked as Head, Division of Crop Protection in Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur, India. He has over 23 years of research, teaching and extension experience in mushroom production, bio-control, microbial diversity, integrated disease management, diagnosis of unknown plant diseases and suitable bio-control agents. He is a recipient of Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed Award for Outstanding Research in Tribal Farming Systems-2010 by Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi, SPPS Meritorious Scientist Award-2011 by Society of Plant Protection Sciences, New Delhi, Distinguished Service Award-2010 by BIOVED Research Society, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh and PP Singhal Memorial PI Industries Award-2018 by Indian Society of Mycology & Plant Pathology, Udaipur. He is a fellow of four prestigious professional societies and a life member of 12 scientific societies. He has published 60 papers in National and International peer-reviewed journals.

S. Chandra Nayaka Dr. S. Chandra Nayaka is an agricultural biotechnology researcher specialized in the application of biotechnological tools in plant pathogen detection, host-pathogen interaction and plant disease management. Dr. Nayaka 19 years of experience in research including visiting scientist at Danish Government institute for seed pathology (Copenhagen University), Denmark, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China, The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid-Tropics (ICRISAT), Hyderabad, India. Working as Professor/Principal Scientist at the University of Mysore in the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), he was the core group member who sequenced full-length genome of a biotrophic highly virulent strain of S. graminicola (NCBI SUBID: 1589825/Bio-Project ID: PRJNA325098). During my post doc at University of Mysore in prestigious Indo-Danish programme, developed research and training program with Copenhagen University, Denmark, and African Seed Health Centre, Sokoine University of Agriculture. He is contributed to develop molecular probes and designed novel PCR primers for rapid and accurate detection of seed-borne pathogens from infected seed samples. Significant research contributions resulted in obtaining four national patents, 90 research articles in reputed National and International journals, 22 book chapters, 03 books, four edited book volume, six technical bulletins/six leaf lets, ten short publications and popular articles, two Technical notes and submitted more than thousand nucleotide sequences of seed-borne pathogens and bio-control agents to NCBI-USA, EMBL- Europe, and DDBJ- Japan database.

N. Srinivasa Dr. N. Srinivasa is working as a senior scientist at Division of Plant Pathology, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute (ICAR-IARI), New Delhi. His area of expertise is in fungal pathology and working in this area for several years and has published a good number of research papers in national and international journals.