Journal of Food Legumes

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is affected by several seed, soil and air borne diseases which are responsible for lowering its yield. Looking at present the area expandingin south zone; cropping system and the changing climate scenario, dry root rot of chickpea (Rhizoctonia balaticola (Taub.) Butler is becoming more severe in central and southern part of India where the crop is mostly grown under rainfed condition as soybean-chickpea or rice-chickpea/wheat. On the basis of current knowledge, an attempt has been made to present an overview of dry root rot of chickpea pertaining to basic, strategic and applied aspects of the disease viz., knowledge gaps, historical, occurrence and losses, effect of climate change on disease development, disease diagnostics, taxonomy, pathogen, histopathology, variability in pathogen and advances made so far to fill up the gaps in our knowledge to manage the disease by the means of host resistance, cultural control, biological control and chemical control.