Evaluation of wild Cicer species accessions for resistance to three pathotypes of Ascochyta rabiei (Pass.) Labr. in Algeria

Chickpea is an important food legume crop in the Central, West Asia and North Africaregion (CWANA), accounting for 29% of the total food legume production (Singh, 1990; Zohary and Hopf, 2000; Kerem et al., 2007). It serves as a source of inexpensive high quality production in the diets of many people and provides a rich crop residue for animal feed (Singh et al., 1992). In the Mediterranean region, chickpea is traditionally sown in spring and, as a consequence of the low rainfull during the growth period in dry summers, these results in poor biomass development (Kanouni et al., 2011). Work on cold tolerance in chickpea has been intiated since, the advantages of fall-sown crop over traditional spring sown crop were realized (Singh et al., 1997). Winter sowing expands the vegetative growth period and improves the seed yield up to 2 tonnes/ha (Singh et al., 1995; Singh