RESEARCH COMMUNICATION Efficacy of fungicides, plant extracts and biocontrol agents against Ascochyta blight (Ascochyta rabiei) of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) under field conditions Salman Ahmad 1* , Muhammad Aslam Khan 2 , Irfan Ahmad 3 , Zafar Iqbal 1 , Ejaz Ashraf 1 , Muhammad Atiq 2 , Yasir Ali 4 & Saima Naseer 5 1 College of Agriculture, University of Sargodha, Sargodha, Pakistan 2 Department of Plant Pathology, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan 3 Department of Forestry and Range Management, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan 4 College of Agriculture, Bahadur Sub-Campus Layyah, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan 5 Plant Pathology Research Institute, Ayub Agriculture Research Institute, Faisalabad, Pakistan *Email: salman.ahmad@uos.edu.pk ARTIC LE HISTORY Received: 25 October 2020 Accepted: 03 January 2021 Published: 01 April 2021 KEYWORDS Biocontrol agent Ascochyta blight Chickpea Fungicides Plant extracts ABSTRACT Two fungicides, Aliete and ThiovitJet @ 0.15%, containing Aluminum tris (O-ethyl phosphonate) and sulphur compounds, respectvely; two plant extracts, Melia azedarach and Azadirachta indica @ 8% and one biocontrol agent, Trichoderma harzianum @ 10 7 conidia ml -1 were investgated against ascochyta blight of chickpea under feld conditons. Treatments were evaluated on three varietes susceptble to chickpea blight. Field trial revealed that Aliete and ThiovitJet signifcantly decreased disease severity to 17 and 23% respectvely, followed by M. azedarach and A. indica which decreased severity to 50 and 56% respectvely, compared to control with 75% disease severity. T. harzianum, with a severity of 63%, was signifcantly less efectve than fungicides and both plant extracts in controlling blight disease. The current research revealed that systemic and sulphur containing fungicides, both plant extracts and the biocontrol agent have the potental to control ascochyta blight of chickpea. Introducton Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is a vital legume crop of the world, grown in more than fifty countries and is on third position in production after dry and field peas (1, 2). It is the source of high quality protein for humans and its crop residues are being used for animal feed. Chickpea contributes towards soil fertility in cereal-legume crop rotations (3). Chickpea are the most cultivated crop among legumes in Pakistan with annual production 359 thousand tons (4). Ascochyta blight caused by Ascochyta rabiei (Pass.) Lab. (teleomorph: Didymella rabiei) (Kovachevski) v. Arx, is a serious constraint to chickpea production. The disease can cause complete crop loss under its epiphytotic occurrence (3). Annually, chickpea blight causes heavy yield losses in Pakistan (5) and caused serious economic losses during the 1980-84 epidemics (6). Several fungicides have been reported effective in the world for the control of ascochyta blight but their repeated applications are uneconomical where chickpea yield is low (3, 7). Antracol, chlorothalonil, maneb, zineb, penconazole, propiconazole, thiabendazole, sulphur based fungicides and captan have been reported effective to avoid secondary spread of ascochyta blight (3). Recently, several plant extracts, viz., Aloe vera, Magnolia grandiflora and Tagetes erectus etc., have been tested and found effective against many plant diseases (8, 9). Plants have secondary metabolites with antifungal activity (10). Similarly, biocontrol agents Chaetomium globosum, Trichoderma viride, Acremonium implicatum have been reported in vitro for their effectiveness against ascochyta blight (11, 12). © Ahmad et al (2021). This is an open-access artcle distributed under the terms of the Creatve Commons Atributon License, which permits unrestricted use, distributon and reproducton in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited (htps://creatvecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). To cite this artcle: Ahmad S, Khan M A, Ahmad I, Iqbal Z, Ashraf E, Atq M, Ali Y, Naseer S. Efcacy of fungicides, plant extracts and biocontrol agents against Ascochyta blight (Ascochyta rabiei) of chickpea (Cicer arietnum L.) under feld conditons. Plant Science Today. 2021;8(2):255–262. htps://doi.org/10.14719/pst.2021.8.2.1007 Plant Science Today, published by Horizon e-Publishing Group, is covered by Scopus, Web of Science, BIOSIS Previews, Clarivate Analytcs, etc. Full list at htp://www.plantsciencetoday.online PLANT SCIENCE TODAY, 2021 Vol 8(2): 255–262 https://doi.org/10.14719/pst.2021.8.2.1007 ISSN 2348-1900 (online) HORIZON e-Publishing Group