PHYU PHYU OO, RAVISH PANCHTA*, SOMVEER NIMBAL, DALVINDER PAL SINGH, NEERAJ KHAROR, SATYAWAN ARYA AND SONU
Department of Genetics & Plant Breeding, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar-125004, (Haryana) India
Department of Plant Pathology, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar-125004, (Haryana) India
Department of Biochemistry, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar-125004, (Haryana) India
*(e-mail : r.panchta@gmail.com)
(Received : 10 April 2022; Accepted : 11 June 2022)
SUMMARY
The present study aimed at morphological characterization of leaf, flower, pod and seed traits of different 46 cowpea [Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp] genotypes on the basis of qualitative and quantitative characters. The genotypes were grown in a randomized block design with three replications at Dry land research area, CCS HAU, Hisar, during kharif-2020. These were classified and grouped into different categories and established significant amount of variation and diversification among different genotypes for various morphological characters. The characters viz., leaf colour, flower colour, pod shape, pod pigmentation at tip, number of branches per plant, number of pods per cluster and seed yield per plant were observed less amount of variation. Majority of the genotypes had indeterminate growth habit and spreading type growth. Wide variation was observed for the leaf shape and most of the genotypes had globose type leaf. In most of the genotypes the seed colour and seed eye colour was tan or brown while seed shape was rhomboid. The characters
viz., plant height, days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, number of clusters per plant, number of seeds per pod, number of pods per plant, pod length, 100 seed weight, crude protein content and digestibility had wide range of variation among all the genotypes. The present study suggested that characterization of morphological traits would help the breeders for utilizing the germplasm collection, evaluation and exploration to maintain genetic purity of genotypes as well as for providing the available knowledge of the present cowpea genotypes as a reference in future breeding programme.
Key words: Morphological characterization, cowpea, diversity, descriptors, germplasm