Exploring the new powdery mildew resistance sources in the landraces of mungbean [Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek]

The lack of disease-resistant and high-yielding cultivars is the primarily responsible for reducing the production efficiency in mungbean. The powdery mildew disease (Erisyphe polygoni) is one of the most devastating diseases in pulses. It affects photosynthetic activity and causes physiological changes in leaf structure, thereby reducing the yielding by 20–40%. Hence, for the purpose of identification of new sources of powdery mildew resistance and to explore the genetic diversity, 40 landraces of mungbean were chosen under current investigation. Initially, these landraces were screened for disease resistance in the field using standard protocols. Then genotyping was performed by employing seven powdery mildew gene-specific polymorphic markers. The software programs viz., TASSEL 5.0 and GenAlE × 6.51b2 were used to carry out the diversity analysis. Khariamunda Black Local, Daspalla Green Local, Bolagarh Green Large, and Narsinghpur Black Local were found be resistant to powdery mildew. The primer CEDG191 had the lowest polymorphic information content (PIC) value (0.298) with an average of 0.407, while CEDG166 had the highest PIC value (0.572). The heterozygosity estimate ranged from 0.435 (CEDG191) to 0.591 (CEDG166), with an average of 0.519. The mungbean landraces were categorized into six main clusters using the dendrogram analysis. Landraces from the distant cluster that have a significantly greater resistance to powdery mildew can be used as potential donors in the crop improvement programme. Genes responsible for resistance can be identified and used under marker assisted selection to bred tolerant cultivars.