Asian Research Journal of Current Science

Diversity in plant germplasm is very important in breeding strategies program to select highly yielding varieties, with considering association between yield and its attributes through estimation of genotypic and phenotypic variability. In western Sudan, there is a crucial need to identify some genotypes for this purpose, so improvement of cowpea line resistant to Bruchid damage in this area also is most important to reduce the losses which caused by Bruchid. The aims of the study were to investigate the morphological and phonological characteristics of sixteen genotypes of cowpea and estimating yield and yield related traits. Estimated morphological characters include growth parameters; (number of leaves /plant, plant height (cm), number of branches, and stem diameter), phenological characters( days : to 50% flowering and maturity).and yield characters include : (number of pods per plant, 100 seed weight, shelling %, grain yield (g/plant) and loss of weight per gram). The results showed highly differences among the genotypes for different morphological characters. Based on the morphological results, the genotypes were divided into three groups these were: group (I) recorded the highest values compared to group (II) and (III). Number of days to flowering ranged between (46 to 66 days). Early flowering genotypes were 5, 4, 9 and 12 and early maturing genotypes were: 5, 2, 4, 3, and 13 respectively with mean number of days (79.6). On the other hand genotypes in group (I), 6, 5, 8 and 10 recorded the highest mean number of pods per plant .Grain yield per plant ranged between (173.5 – 713.5), in this respect genotypes 6, 16, and 5 (group I.) could be considered high yielder (g), therefore in the third group genotypes 13 , 14, 17, and 10 recorded the lowest loss of pod weight (1.1 – 1.7 g) in case of that this group classified as less infected group.