Journal of Experimental Agriculture International

India is the largest producer as well as consumer of chickpea, and 70% of the crop area is in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, during 2023-24. Chickpea is one of the most important pulse crops of India and an essential source of protein. This crop is highly prone to diseases, among them, Fusarium wilt is one of the important diseases, and yield losses ranged from 10 to 100%. It is both seed and soil-borne pathogen as well as a facultative saprophyte. This paper aims to review Fusarium wilt caused by Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. Ciceris (Foc) is worldwide in occurrence and highly destructive in nature, and the chickpea cultivation is greatly threatened by this disease. General symptoms of chickpea wilt are wilting, drooping, discolouration, yellowing, browning of xylem vessels and eventual collapse of the whole plant. It produces three different types of spores asexually, such as micro-conidia, macro-conidia and chlamydospores, and among them, chlamydospores serve as the primary source of inoculum. Prevalence and severity of disease are driven by inoculum populations in the soil and susceptibility of cultivar, and the pathogen survives for about 6 years. Foc has two different pathotypes (wilting and yellowing) and eight races (races 0, 1A, 1B/C, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6). In Andhra Pradesh, race 1A is more prevalent. Various molecular approaches, RAPD, ITS-RFLP, ISSR, SCAR, AFLP, SSR, ITS, rDNA and LAMP markers were used for identification and to observe genetic variation for Fusarium spp. This review depicts a comprehensive idea of the disease, pathogen, distribution, symptoms, races, cultural, morphological and molecular characterisation of the pathogen, which will be useful for future research on Fusarium wilt of chickpea. Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. ciceris is one of the most important soil born pathogen pathogens and causes wilt in chickpea, and it is distributed in many countries throughout the world.