Molecular Perspectives of Host-Pathogen Interaction in Fusarium-Wilt in Pigeonpea

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Pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan (L.) Millspaugh) is the seventh most economically important legume crop in the world, cultivated on 6.09 million hectares of land across the world with 5.01 million tonnes of global productivity. Fusarium udum Butler is responsible for vascular wilt, the most devastating pigeon pea disease throughout the world. Management of Fusarium-wilt through cultural practices is not effective enough, and chemical control methods cause the killing of non-target beneficial soil microorganisms. Biological practices using various antagonistic fungi or microorganisms are found to be more effective than other practices. Expression analysis and molecular characterization of various biotic and abiotic stress-related molecular factors have been established in order to understand the host defense response mechanism. Development of disease-resistant cultivars through markerassisted breeding programs is restricted due to insufficient genome resources, pathogenic variability, and location-specific occurrence and behavior of pathogenic isolates. Marker-assisted breeding through the introgression of resistance (R) genes is difficult to achieve in pigeon pea, as mapping of R genes was not completed in the recent past. Therefore, understanding molecular factors and signaling pathways associated with disease resistance or susceptibility is supposed to be helpful in finding out future directions for wilt management. Whole genome sequencing, transcriptome profiling through cDNA, AFLP and NGS, etc., are convenient methods to recognize the mechanism of host defense and defense regulatory pathways during Fusarium-wilt. The recent availability of pigeonpea whole genome sequence and transcriptome-wide marker resources and molecular characterization of disease-responsive molecular factors can efficiently be utilized for accelerating resistant breeding programs.