They’ll be going down some interesting paths in new research into chickpea disease at the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries (NSWDPI) Tamworth Agricultural Research Centre.

A team led by specialist pulse pathologist Kevin Moore will investigate products that might boost plants’ natural defence mechanisms or have biological control activity against Ascochyta blight,  Botrytis grey mould and Phytophthora root rot. 

The work is planned for the second and third years of a new Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) supported project, headed by NSWDPI but also involving Queensland’s Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries (QDPI&F) and specialist pathologists around Australia.

The aim of the project is to help farmers grow more profitable chickpea crops through improved disease management, building on research carried out in this area in earlier GRDC projects.

The “blue sky” component of the project will investigate the potential of:

• generic and proprietary products – like sodium salicylate and Boost – to induce systemic acquired disease resistance in chickpeas; the commercial product Boost has already been used to that effect in cotton, and

• a commercially available isolate of the bacterium Bacillus cereus known as UW85, after the University of Winconsin, where it was developed.

“Field trials in lucerne in the United States have shown UW85 reduces lucerne root rot caused by Phytophthora medicaginis , the same organism that causes Phytophthora root rot in chickpea,” Dr Moore said.

“We will investigate the possibility of conducting trials with UW85 at Tamworth.

“We have also been discussing with scientists at the Flinders University Medical School the potential of a group of fungi called Actinomycetes against Phytopthora root rot. Several members of this group are known to produce like streptomycin.

“They will screen their isolates of Actinomycetes against phytopthora cultures that we will send them. It’s not known if Actinomycetes affects fungal leaf diseases like Ascochyta blight and Botrytis grey mould and we will also explore that possibility.”

Dr Moore said the project had also begun collaborating with scientists at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology who had developed strains of Rhizobium that produce very high levels of salicycic acid.

Chickpeas would be inoculated with these Rhizobium strains to see if they could protect the plant against foliar and root diseases by switching on the plant’s systemic acquired resistance.