Abstract
In laboratory studies, the antifungal substance of antioxidant, hydroquinone at 5, 10, 15 and 20 mM reduced linear growth of two chickpea pathogenic fungi, Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. ciceris Schlect. Emend. Snyd & Hans. (2 isolates) and F. solani Mart. (4 isolates). The reduction in fungal linear growth was signify-cantly increased by increasing the concent-ration. The highest inhibitory effect of hydro-quinone at 20mM was 66.64% and 52.12% for F. oxysporum f. sp. ciceris and F. solani isolates, respectively. On the other hand, hydroquinone at 20 mM has reduced mycelial dry weight of fungal isolates with percentages of 60.82 % and 55.56 % for F. oxysporum f. sp. ciceris and F. solani isolates, respectively.
In vitro studies, soaking chickpea seeds of six Giza cultivars (1, 2, 3, 88. 195 and 531) in hydroquinone at 10mM for 10 min increased the germination percentage by 3.09-10.67%, shoot length by 14.21-56.83 %, as well as root length by 12.46-61.62 %. However, it decree-sed the colonies number of seed-borne fungi developed from seeds by (5.77 to 89.47 %).
Greenhouse experiments were carried out by seed soaking in hydroquinone at 10mM for 24 hours for the six used chickpea cultivars and this treatment caused reduction in disease incidence of damping-off. This reduction ranged from 25.01 to 100 % depending on the cultivar with increasing fresh weights of shoot and root by 6.06 - 536.361 % and 2.14 - 417.86 respectively. Dry weights for shoots and roots also increased by 2.13 to 300 % and 3.17 to 109.52 %, respectively.
Such results could be applied in the field which might decrease the use of the common destructive fungicides.

Key words: Hydroquinone, seed treatment, F. oxysporum f. sp. ciceris, F. solani, control, chickpea, cicer.