Inheritance of Early and Late Ascochyta Blight Resistance in Wide Crosses of Chickpea

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum) is a globally important food legume but its yield is negatively impacted by the fungal pathogen Ascochyta blight (Ascochyta rabiei) causing necrotic lesions leading to plant death. Past studies have found that Ascochyta resistance is polygenic. It is important to find new resistance genes from the wider genepool of chickpeas. This study reports the inheritance of Ascochyta blight resistance of two wide crosses between the cultivar Gokce and wild chickpea accessions of C. reticulatum and C. echinospermum under field conditions in Southern Turkey. Following inoculation, infection damage was scored weekly for six weeks. The families were genotyped for 60 SNPs mapped to the reference genome for quantitative locus (QTL) mapping of resistance. Family lines showed broad resistance score distributions. A late responding QTL on chromosome 7 was identified in the C. reticulatum family and three early responding QTLs on chromosomes 2, 3, and 6 in the C. echinospermum family. Wild alleles mostly showed reduced disease severity, while heterozygous genotypes were most diseased. Interrogation of 200k bp genomic regions of the reference CDC Frontier genome surrounding QTLs identified nine gene candidates involved in disease resistance and cell wall remodeling. This study identifies new candidate chickpea Ascochyta blight resistance QTLs of breeding potential.