though limited in efficacy in many cases , the control methods available today represent a major progress when compared to the lack of any means for the control of these plants one or two decades ago .
crops can be protected by resistance , by selective fungicides , by biocontrol agents , and by cultural methods that did not existed before . the current focus in applied
breeding is leveraging biotechnological tools to develop more and better markers to allow marker assisted selection with the hope that this will speed up the delivery of improved cultivars to the farmer . to date , however , progress in marker development and delivery of useful markers has been slow in legumes .
we are now also facing an accelerated progress in the genomic and biotechnological research , which should soon provide important understanding of some crucial developmental mechanisms in both the parasites and their host plants and will provide candidate genes for resistance to ascochyta blight .
the application of ngs technologies will provide a new research framework and molecular tools to be applied in resistance to ascochyta blight in legumes .
the authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest .
 legume cultivation is strongly hampered by the occurrence of ascochyta blights . 
 strategies of control have been developed but only marginal successes achieved . breeding for disease resistance is regarded the most cost efficient method of control . 
 significant genetic variation for disease resistance exists in most legume crops with numerous germplasm lines maintained , providing an excellent resource for plant breeders . 
 fast and reliable screening methods have been adjusted to fulfill breeding program needs . however 
 , the complex inheritance controlled quantitatively by multiple genes , has been difficult to manipulate . 
 successful application of biotechnology to ascochyta blight resistance breeding in legume crops will facilitate a good biological knowledge both of the crops  pathogen interaction and of the mechanisms underlying resistance . 
 the current focus in applied breeding is leveraging biotechnological tools to develop more and better markers to speed up the delivery of improved cultivars to the farmer . to date , however , progress in marker development and delivery of useful markers has been slow in most legumes . 
 the limited saturation of the genomic regions bearing putative qtls in legume crops makes difficult to identify the most tightly linked markers and to determine the accurate position of qtls . 
 the application of next generation sequencing technologies will contribute to the development of new markers and the identification of candidate genes for ascochyta blight resistance . 