Screening lentil (Lens culinaris Medik) Genotypes for Resistance against Pre-Flowering Blight and Identification of Pathogen by ITS Sequencing

Major constraints in increasing lentil growing area in eastern India is mortality due to several diseases throughout the growth stages. Breeding lentil for disease tolerance by genotypic resistance is most promising and easier method. Therefore, a collection of 500 genotypes have been screened in this study for pre-flowering blight-like disease which is predominant in experimental field for last ten years. Fungal DNA isolation from ten randomly selected diseased plants followed by ITS sequencing using universal primer pair revealed cent percent similarity in NCBI database with single organism Alternaria alternata. Three popular varieties viz. WBL-77, Ranjan and Asha were kept as check for disease reaction comparison. 466 genotypes survived till flowering and scoring was made using 1-9 scale. Only three lines, EC866132, IC267667, IC201778 established as the tolerant lines against Alternaria blight attack at the pre-flowering stage.