Characterization and Evaluation of Ethiopian Cowpea Land Races

Thirty six Cowpea (Vigina unguiculata) landraces were tested in triple lattice at Melkassa Agricultural Research Center in 2015. The objectives of the study were to determine phenotypic diversity of cowpea landrace by using morphological characters, asses the magnitude of Phenotypic and genotypic variation among cowpea landraces and study the nature and magnitude of association between yield and its component traits in 36 cowpea landraces. Analysis of variance showed highly significant difference among the landraces in all traits. Phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) values were high for harvest index, number seeds per plant, plot yield, number of pods per plant, number of seeds per plant, 100- seed weight, pod length, plant height, biomass yield, number of pod clusters per plant. Genotypic Coefficient of Variance (GCV) was high for harvest index, number of seeds per plant, number of pods per plant, grain yield per plot, number of seeds per pod, 100-seed weight, pod length, biomass yield, plant height, and number of pod clusters per plant, but low for days to maturity. PCV values were generally higher than their corresponding GCV values for all the traits considered.