Crop Diseases Research Program

SERVICES

Farm Advisory and Plant disease Diagnosis Service: Although, plant disease diagnosis has been done at the Institute for many years regular diagnostic and advisory services were started in 1988. Since than, more than 100-150 samples are analyzed and recommendations made every year. More than 40 fungal, 20 bacterial and 15 nematode diseases have been recorded for the first time.

Type Culture Collection Service: This services was started in 1989. Up till now sixty five pathogenic cultures of diseases of economic crop plants have been preserved.

Inoculum, Trap and Disease screening nurseries: CDRP provides disease inoculum to provincial and federal; breeders for their screening programmes at provincial and federal levels. As part of its programme, the Institute prepares and distributes a National Wheat Diseases Screening Nursery (NWDSN) to other wheat research organizations. The NWDSN comprises 300 to 400 entries, including widely grown commercial varieties and advanced lines from national breeders. The nursery is planted at a dozen or so sites throughout the country, where artificial inoculations are performed to place have disease pressure on the breeding materials. This nursery help to identify new sources of resistance to the prevalent and new races of rusts and to evaluate breeding mateials for their disease reaction. CDRP also prepares and distributed the Wheat Rust Trap Nursery (WRTN) each year. This nursery includes commerical varieties and is used to monitor and trap the natural virulence of each race of rust prevalent in the country (Anon., 1989b).

National Uniform Yield Trials

Data from these trials are vital for the National Wheat Breeding Programme and National Variety Release System. Diseases Reactions of NUWYT are used by the Variety Evaluation Committee for releasing for releasing candidate lines as commercial varieties.

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