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Peas (Pisum sativum L.) is an important frost-hardy, cool-season, nutritious green leguminous pod-shaped vegetable belonging to family Fabaceae. Despite the importance of pea, the cultivation of crop is being hindered by several biotic and abiotic stresses. Among the biotic stresses, the disease causing pathogens are considered as the major factor the deterioration of quality and quantity of pea. With this, the powdery mildew disease caused by Erysiphe pisi is considered as one among the major disease of peas. Hence, there is a need to develop an effective disease management strategy. In order to develop an effective management strategy against the powdery mildew disease of peas the accurate identification and morphological characterization of fungal pathogen is essential. Till date very limited information’s are available on the morphological characterization of E. pisi. ESEM analysis of E. pisi clearly reveal that the colour, shape and size of the conidia. The colour of the conidia was observed as hyaline. The shape of the conidia was varied from oblong (young) to Cylindrical (matured) conidia. The length of conidia was ranged from 24.84-33.06 μm with the mean of 29.09 μm whereas the width of the conidia ranged from 14.23-18.10 μm with the mean of 16.09 μm. Moreover, conidia harvested from P. sativum leaves were able to produce new powdery mildew conidia after 4-7 days of inoculation on healthy detached P. sativum leaves. This preliminary analysis of E. pisi provides information about its infectivity and morphological nature and it would helpful for better understanding of host-pathogen interaction, and may be useful in the development of early detection and effective management strategy in future.

Key words: Conidia, Erysiphe pisi, Environmental scanning electron microscopy, Pisum sativum, Powdery mildew