Department of Agricultural Botany, College of Agriculture, Dharwar-5, Karnataka
The inheritance of four morphological characters was studied in a cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (Z.) Walp.) cross involving subspecies sesquipedalis and sinensis.
It was found that each of the characters like colour of unripe pod and flower bud, are governed by the same set of two pairs of genes, one being responsible for colour production and other being an inhibitory gene. Thus these genes showed pleiotropic gene action in governing the inheritance of colour in both flower bud and unripe pod.
A common gene was found to be responsible for the production of flower colour and seed coat colour. Inheritance of flower colour showed monogenic segregation, whereas for seed coat colour there is a supplementary gene in addition to the basic gene.
