Ecological genetic divergence of the fungal pathogen Didymella rabiei on sympatric wild and domesticated Cicer spp. (Chickpea).

ABSTRACT: For millennia, chickpea (Cicer arietinum) has been grown in the Levant sympatrically with wild Cicer species. Chickpea is traditionally spring-sown, while its wild relatives germinate in the autumn and develop in the winter. It has been hypothesized that the human-directed shift of domesticated chickpea to summer production was an attempt to escape the devastating Ascochyta disease caused by Didymella rabiei. We estimated genetic divergence between D. rabiei isolates sampled from wild Cicer judaicum and domesticated C. arietinum and the potential role of temperature adaptation in this divergence. Neutral genetic markers showed strong differentiation between pathogen samples from the two hosts. Isolates from domesticated chickpea demonstrated increased adaptation to higher temperatures when

SUBMITTER: Frenkel O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2798644 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature