Variability studies in vegetable type cowpea under variable environments

Cowpea is one of the most important legume vegetable in India and Indian sub continent is considered as its place of origin, which resulted divers native germplasm. Therefore, an experiment was carried out at Horticul-tural Research cum Instructional Farm, IGKV, Raipur during kharif and rabi 2007-08 to study the extent of genetic variability in 60 diverse vegetable cowpea genotypes. The mean sum of squares due to genotypes were highly significant for all the characters in both the environments. The magnitudes of PCV were higher than the GCV. Highest and close GCV and PCV were recorded for pod weight and green pod yield per plant in kharif and rabi respectively. Highest heritability estimate was recorded for days to 50% flowering and pod weight whereas, highest genetic advance as percent of mean were recorded for pod weight and green pod yield per plant during kharif and rabi seasons respectively. High heritability along with high genetic advance were recorded for pod weight, green pod yield per plant, number of pods per cluster, number of pods per plant, pod length and plant height, hence selection based on these characters would be more effective for the improvement in cowpea.