{"title":"Agronomic performance and genetic variability of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) Accessions","authors":"D. K. Nkoana, A. Gerrano, E. Gwata","doi":"10.18805/LR-450","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Cowpea is a drought tolerant food legume but yields are generally low in South Africa due to non-availability of improved varieties. The current study was undertaken to evaluate agronomic performance of cowpea germplasm and select the candidate accessions for breeding population and cultivation by small-scale farmers in South Africa. A randomized complete block design with three replications was used for the experiment. Data were collected on the agronomic traits including days to 50% maturity, days to 95% maturity, hundred seed weight, leaf area index, number of branches, number of internodes, number of seeds per plant, plant height, number of pods per plant, pod length, dry biomass weight per plant, grain yield per plant and grain yield per hectare. Highly significant differences were observed among the accessions for all traits. The grain yield per hectare was correlated positively and significantly with number of pods per plant and grain yield per plant showing a scope for simultaneous improvement of yield and yield related traits. Principal Component biplot revealed that accessions Acc2024, Acc5352, Acc2355, Acc4565, Glenda and L-cwp3 were the most genetically distinct accessions and can serve as potential candidate parental lines for hybridization to achieving transgressive segregation population in breeding programmes.","PeriodicalId":18181,"journal":{"name":"Legume Research","volume":"41 1","pages":"757-762"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2019-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"9","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Legume Research","FirstCategoryId":"99","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.18805/LR-450","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"AGRONOMY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 9
Abstract
Cowpea is a drought tolerant food legume but yields are generally low in South Africa due to non-availability of improved varieties. The current study was undertaken to evaluate agronomic performance of cowpea germplasm and select the candidate accessions for breeding population and cultivation by small-scale farmers in South Africa. A randomized complete block design with three replications was used for the experiment. Data were collected on the agronomic traits including days to 50% maturity, days to 95% maturity, hundred seed weight, leaf area index, number of branches, number of internodes, number of seeds per plant, plant height, number of pods per plant, pod length, dry biomass weight per plant, grain yield per plant and grain yield per hectare. Highly significant differences were observed among the accessions for all traits. The grain yield per hectare was correlated positively and significantly with number of pods per plant and grain yield per plant showing a scope for simultaneous improvement of yield and yield related traits. Principal Component biplot revealed that accessions Acc2024, Acc5352, Acc2355, Acc4565, Glenda and L-cwp3 were the most genetically distinct accessions and can serve as potential candidate parental lines for hybridization to achieving transgressive segregation population in breeding programmes.
期刊介绍:
Legume Research An International Journal. The Journal is an official publication of Agricultural Research Communication Centre. It is designed to bring out the original research articles on genetics, breeding, physiology, bacterial avtivity, production, quality, biochemistry and seeds of legumes crops. The objective of the journal is to serve as a forum for scientific community to publish their research findings on legumes ans to provide basis for new research. Journal is being scanned in the important indexing and abstracting services.