Study of Sterility Mosaic Disease Resistance on Immortal Population in Pigeonpea

The cultivated pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) is one of the most important source of proteinfor worlds marginal and vegetarian population. Sterility mosaic disease (SMD) also knownas “green plague of pigeonpea” is one of the severe threats in pigeon pea productioncausing severe yield loss. Keeping this in view, identification of SMD resistant cultivarswith better understanding of inheritance of disease were key consideration for the presentstudy. RILs were screened for SMD resistance with leaf stapling technique at Green house,IBT, PJTSAU during Kharif 2012 and 2013. RILs showed digenic ratio (9S:7R) for SMDresistance, indicating complementary gene action which showed dominance ofsusceptibility over resistant and based on the per cent disease incidence, the RILs could bebroadly classified as resistant (PDI 20%).The SMDincidence among the 188 RILs ranged from 0 to 100% whereas, the susceptible parent(ICP 8863) showed mean value of 79.17% and resistant parent (ICPL 20097) showed it as0%. Out of total 188 RILs screened, 90 RILs showed resistant reaction to SMD infectionwhile 98 RILs were susceptible. 33 RILs were identified as resistant lines whichconsistently showed 0% PDI during screening for both the years.