SCREENING OF ONION GERMPLASM RAISED. FOR SEED CROP AGAINST PURPLE BLOTCH

Abstract

Purple blotch caused by Alternaria porri (Ellis) Ciferri is an important
disease of onion crop in India. Both seed as well as bulb crops are infected
but the intensity is higher in the former. To control this disease, various
cultural (Awad et ai., 1978; l30elema and Ethlers, 1967) and chemical methods
(Desai et al., 1979; Gupta et ai., 1981) have been tried but disease still continues
to be a serious problem. Breeding for disease resistance appears to be an
effective, economical and practical method of disease control. This paper reports
the relative reaction of different onion genotypes against purple blotch in the
field trials