India, with its varied agro-climatic conditions and topography, is considered as the botanical garden of the world. Its herbal wealth constitutes about 5000 species of known medicinal and aromatic plants, which have been used in various systems of medicine such as Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani to treat human since time immemorial. Besides, the idea of using medicinal plants to treat livestock is not new to India, making thus the importance of medicinal plants much more interesting in agriculture oriented country including India (Anonymous, 2001a). Isabgol (Plantago ovata Forsk.) is one of the important medicinal plants. It is also known as blond psyllium and belongs to the family Plantaginaceae of the order Plantaginales. It is a native of Mediterranean region, especially south of France (Rastogi and Mehrotra, 1993). It was introduced in India during Muslim attack in middle ages. The name “Isabgol” is derived from two Parsian words “Isap” and “Ghol” meaning horse’s ear means shape of seeds, which resembles the ear of horse. In India, it is traditionally cultivated in North Gujarat, Kutch and South-western Rajasthan. Likewise, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab produce small quantity of isabgol. Rajasthan is the second largest growing state after Gujarat. Mehsana, Banaskantha, Jamnagar, Rajkot HIND AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH AND TRAINING INSTITUTE and Kutch districts are main tracks of isabgol cultivation in Gujarat (Rathore and Pathak, 2002d). Isabgol crop suffers a lot due to fungal and bacterial diseases, but fungal diseases are predominant. Damping-off seedlings, wilt, downy mildew and powdery mildew are major fungal diseases. Among these, downy mildew is the most important and wide spread disease which appears in sever form every year and causes extensive quantitative as well as qualitative damage to the crop and makes the cultivation of isabgol crop unprofitable (Rathore and Pathak, 2002b). Downy mildew causes considerable reduction in seed yield and yield attributes of isabgol. It is reported to be caused by Peronospora alta Fuckel (Kapoor and Chowdhary, 1976), Pseudoperonospora plantaginis Underwood (Sharma and Pushpendra, 1998) and Peronospora plantaginis Underwood (Desai and Desai, 1969). Peronospora plantaginis is a commonly prevailing pathogen of isabgol downy mildew in Gujarat The varietal resistance is an ecofriendly method for management of plant diseases. Hence a search was made to locate resistant germplasm/culture. Fifteen germplasm/ cultures, collected from the Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, ICAR scheme, Anand Agricultural University, Anand (Table Varietal screening of isabgol ( Plantago ovata Forsk.) against downy mildew N.N.PATEL 1 *, R.G. PARMAR 2 AND S.T. PATEL 2 1 Krishi Vigyan Kendra, KUTCH (GUJARAT) INDIA 2 Department of Plant Pathology, B.A. College of Agriculture, Anand Agricultural University, ANAND (GUJARAT) INDIA ABSTRACT Isabgol (Plantago ovata Forsk.) is important medicinal plant. Isabgol crop suffers a lot due to fungal diseases. Among all diseases, downy mildew caused by Peronospora plantaginis Underwood is the most important and wide spread disease, which appears in severe form every year and causes extensive damage to the crop. Therefore screenings of 15 germplasm against downy mildew disease was carried out. How to view point the article : Patel, N.N., Parmar, R.G. and Patel, S.T. (2014). Varietal screening of isabgol (Plantago ovata Forsk.) against downy mildew. Internat. J. Plant Protec., 7(1): 243-245. Key Words : Plantago Ovata Forsk, Peronospora plantaginis, Underwood Received : 06.06.2013 Accepted : 18.03.2014 *Corresponding author: Email: ramji1073@yahoo.co.in INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PLANT PROTECTION | VOLUME 7 | ISSUE 1 | APRIL, 2014 | 243-245 e ISSN-0976-6855 | www.researchjournal.co.in | Open Access RESEARCH NOTE ARITCLE I NFO IJPP