Resistance to blast in interspecific finger millet progenies

Blast disease caused by Magnaporthe grisea (anamorph-Pyricularia grisea (Cooke) Sacc.) is the single most destructive disease of finger millet (Eleusine coracana) causing substantial yield losses to the crop. Infection of the neck and head by the blast pathogen inhibit grain formation, causes shrivelling of grains, and in extreme cases causes yield losses up to 90%. A study was conducted to identify new blast resistant sources among the F4 (derived from E. kigeziensis x E. coracana ( Pese 1), E. africana x E. coracana (Seremi 1) and E. africana x E. coracana (Seremi 3) ) interspecific finger millet progenies and to exploit such broad sources of genetic variation and potential for increased finger millet productivity. Significant differences among the F4 progeny for all the three forms of blast disease were found, with the highest mean square of variance being for neck blast, followed by head blast and least leaf blast. Two lines were resistant to all the three forms of blast disease, 13 lines were resistant to neck blast and head blast and moderately resistant to leaf blast; six lines were resistant to neck and head blast but susceptible to leaf blast. No lines showed total immunity (highly resistant) and high susceptibility to the leaf blast disease.