Studies were conducted on blast disease of finger millet that included cultural,
morphological, pathological and molecular diversity, epidemiology and identification of
host-plant resistance at International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics
(ICRISAT), Patancheru, India and field trials were conducted at ICRISAT; ARS,
Vizianagaram; RARS, Nandyal; ZARS, Mandya and OFRS, Naganahalli. A total of 125
blast disease specimens from finger millet, 6 from foxtail millet, 3 from rice and 5 from
pearl millet were collected from major crop growing areas of India during 2008-2010. From
these samples, a total of 70 monoconidial isolates of Magnaporthe grisea, 56 from finger
millet, 6 from foxtail millet, 3 from rice and 5 from pearl millet were obtained. Of the 70
isolates, 15 each were from Patancheru and Vizianagaram, 13 from Nandyal, 14 from
Mandya, 8 from Naganahalli and one each from Dholi, Aurangabad, Hissar, Jaipur and
Solan...
