CHARACTERIZATION OF ELITE FORAGE COWPEA GENOTYPES FOR
VARIOUS DUS TRAITS
SUNIL KUMAR, DALBIR PHOGAT* AND NABIN BHUSAL
Department of Genetics & Plant Breeding
CCS Haryana Agricultural University,
Hisar-125 004 (Haryana), India
*(e-mail : dalbir.phogat@gmail.com)
(Received : 18 September 2014; Accepted : 26 November 2014)
SUMMARY
Present investigation was carried out to characterize 20 forage cowpea genotypes on the basis of various morphological characters which were mentioned in cowpea germplasm catalogue of International Institute of Tropical Agriculture catalogue. The investigation was conducted in two environmental conditions. Results revealed that all the genotypes showed same expression in both the environments and found significant amount of variation among the genotypes for various morphological characters. All genotypes showed indeterminate type of main stem and raceme type of layer in canopy; whereas genotypes viz., KBC 2, IC 249141, HC 46, CO 4, EC 3941-1, EC 101980, Kohinoor and CO 5 showed unique state of expression among nine characters viz., incidence of cowpea mosaic virus, seed crowding in pod, texta structure, eye colour, pod shape, pod attachment to peduncle, terminal leaflet shape, twining tendency and flower pigmentation, respectively. While two genotypes HC 46 and EC 3941-1 had wrinkled texta structure with pigmented wings and tan (brown) eye colour with curved pod shape, respectively. Remaining genotypes showed various states of expression in a group of two or more genotypes together. This investigation reveals that classification of genotypes on the basis of DUS traits provided identification of key characteristics of various genotypes which can be used to distinguish them from others and also further investigation of these characters may help to crop improvement programme.
Key words: Cowpea, Vigna unguiculata, characterization, morphological characters, DUS traits