Didymella rabiei


Didymella rabiei, commonly called chickpea ascochyta blight fungus is a fungal plant pathogen of chickpea. Didymella rabiei is the teleomorph of Ascochyta rabiei, which is the anamorph, but both names are the same species.

Names

The specific epithet rabiei refers to rabbia del ceci or 'rabies of chickpea', a name for the disease.
The disease is also referred to as ascochyta blight but there are other fungal species that cause diseases in other pulse species that also go by that term. It also goes by the name blight of chickpea. In French it is called anthracnose du pois-chiche or ascochytose du pois-chiche. In German it is referred to as Anthraknose: Kichererbse. It is called ascoquita del garbanzo or rabia del garbanzo in Spanish.

Description

D. rabiei has a spherical punctiform and membranous pyrenium, at first lutescent then opening to a rounded black ostiole. It has numerous elliptical and hyaline spores or varying size.

Hosts

D. rabiei is known for infecting cultivated annual chickpea, but also commonly infects other wild perennial chickpea species such as Cicer monbretti, Cicer ervoides, Cicer judaicum, and Cicer pinnatifidum.
Other host species include:
A chemical analysis of aquafaba indicated that a number of proteins in a particularly well-performing batch were found to be versions from D. rabiei, specifically tRNA -methyltransferase, o-acyltransferase, oxidoreductase, histone H3, and histone H2B. It is unclear how much of an effect these proteins have on the properties of aquafaba.