Morphoagronomic characterization of traditional cowpea varieties

Abstract

Despite the significant socioeconomic importance of cowpea, there is still limited information in the literature regarding local varieties and their ecophysiological and morphophysiological differences. Thus, the present study aimed to characterize the morpho-agronomic traits of nineteen traditional accessions of cowpea cultivated in a protected environment. The experiment was conducted in a protected setting at the experimental area of the Federal Institute of Rondônia, Colorado do Oeste Campus, in the municipality of Colorado do Oeste, RO. The experimental design used was a randomized block design, consisting of nineteen traditional accessions of cowpea with six replications. Harvesting of the different cowpea accessions was staggered, taking into account subclasses and cultivation cycles, evaluating days to emergence, days to flowering, length of the apical leaflets, width of the apical leaflets, pod length, pod width, number of pods per plant, number of seeds per pod, seed length, seed width, and seed thickness. The results concluded that the northern region serves as an important center for in situ conservation of cowpea. The cowpea accessions showed morpho-agronomic variability concerning quantitative traits of flowering, number of pods, pod length, pod width, number of seeds, and seed length, width, and thickness. The accessions IFPA-04, IFPA-10 and IFPA-15 produced the highest number of pods, with 8.16, 8.33, and 8.00 pods per plant, respectively; whereas the accessions IFPA-03, IFPA-07, IFPA-08, IFPA-09, IFPA-11, IFPA-12, IFPA-15, IFPA-16, IFPA-17, and bean beach produced seeds of greater length and consequently greater width and thickness.