Identification of a unique accession in cowpea with dense pubescence

Cowpea is a multi-season and multipurpose leguminous crop cultivated in arid and semi-arid regions of Indian sub-continent. To exploit the available variability, intensive efforts towards the characterization of entire germplasm conserved in Indian national gene bank is need of the hour. Therefore, the present study emphasized on delineation of existing variability for different morphological traits in mega characterization programme conducted at ICAR-NBPGR, New Delhi. Consequently, a rare and unique cowpea accession, namely EC762384, was identified with very high pubescence and also validated over multiple seasons and locations. Pubescence plays an instrumental role in protecting the crop from different biotic and abiotic stresses along with its adaptation mechanism. Thus, identified germplasm accession may be utilized as a donor for the development of cowpea varieties with high pubescence which would be helpful for sustainable food and nutritional security under climate change scenario.