MORPHO- GENETICS OF A LANDRACE CROSS OF COWPEA (vigna unguiculata L. walp) FOR HUMID ENVIRONMENT PERFORMANCE

Cowpea breeding programme have released varieties for dry savanna for dry savanna cowpea yield improvement. Knowledge of gene actions operative for humid environment-sensitive genotypes are explorable in practical cowpea breeding. Danilla (P1), a land race genotype grown in dry savanna ecology and Ife-brown (P2), a cultivar grown in dry and transitional savanna ecology respectively produced early generations of (F1 - F2) and backcrosses to study the inheritance pattern in 10 agronomic traits. Simple additive-dominance gene effects controlled variations in number and length of peduncles, number of pods per plant and number of seeds per pod. Additive gene effects were higher than dominant gene effects for these traits. Direct selection for seed weight and days to flowering with duplicate epistatic gene effects will not produce appreciable result in meaningful practical breeding. To breed for reduced date to flowering with weighted seed size, high genetic variance with fixed additive gene effects will be required for these traits. Peduncles and seed number traits with additive gene effect and reduced environmental effect can be exploited in practical breeding programme for producing high yielding genotypes of cowpea for humid savanna agro-ecolog