Screening of Sesame Entries against Phyllody Disease under Field Conditions

Phyllody is one of the major constraints causing economical yield losses and initially it was considered to be caused by a virus but later resulted it was associated with phytoplasma presence. In the integrated management of phyllody disease of sesame, host plant resistance only plays a key role. Keeping this in view, a total of 137 entries including susceptible check YLM-66 variety (sarada) were screened under field conditions during kharif, 2021 to identify the resistance sources in the cultivars and for further exploitation in resistance breeding programme. Among which, none of the sesame entries were found immune or resistant to the disease. However, 10 entries (UTS-6, UTS-29, UTS-39, UTS-32, UTS-35, RMT-498, RMT-496, RT-430, NIC-10621-B and GT-10 were found moderately resistant with disease incidence ranged from 13.61-19.59 per cent, 52 showed tolerant reaction, 63 showed moderately susceptible reaction, nine found susceptible and two found highly susceptible disease reaction to phyllody disease and per cent disease incidence of 70.50 per cent was recorded in susceptible check, YLM-66 at harvest.