The soluble sugar content of legume seeds affects the final flavor of the legume and legume products. The purpose of this study was to develop a rapid, simple, and low-cost colorimetric method for high-throughput screening of sucrose content in legume seeds. This colorimetric method was based on the enzymatic reactions of invertase (INV) and glucose oxidase (GOD). Briefly, 20 different soybean and cowpea varieties were used in this study. For sucrose extraction, solvent-to-sample ratios of 10:1 and 5:1 were found to result in optimal absorbance values for determining sucrose content in soybean and cowpea, respectively. The extraction efficiency was also evaluated under various extraction temperatures (25℃ and 50℃) and incubation times (15 minutes, 2 hours, 8 hours, and 24 hours) and the sucrose content was found to increase with increasing temperature and time. Accordingly, the optimal extraction conditions were 24 hours of incubation at 50℃. Under this condition, the GOD/INV method had significant positive correlations (
Citations
Cowpea is an annual legume crop; although it is an essential food in developing countries, cowpea is now grown worldwide. For the genetic improvement of plants, flowering time is one of the major selection criteria. In general, flowering is regulated by photoperiod and temperature, along with the interaction between environmental factors. In this study, we aimed to investigate the candidate genes associated with flowering time using genome-wide association study (GWAS). To investigate the flowering time-related genes, 384 cowpea germplasms were genotyped with 51,128 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The main genetic component of days to flowering (DTF) was analyzed using genome association and prediction integrated tool (GAPIT) and elastic-net analyses. From the GAPIT and elastic-net analyses, a total of 23 SNPs were significantly associated with DTF among five (chr. 2, 3, 7, 9, and 11) and seven (chr. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, and 9) different chromosomes, respectively. Based on our analysis,
Citations
Cowpea (
Citations
Climate change has imposed greater challenge on cowpea production in the savannah ecology of West Africa sub-region in the recent time, however, development of varieties that combined resilience (stability) and precocity with high seed yield would be a sustainable approach to mitigate this problem. To this end, nine advanced breeding lines were evaluated along with two commercial varieties across three locations in guinea savannah ecology, using a randomized complete block design of three replications. Results obtained for seed yield and yield components indicate that the eleven cowpeas exhibited substantial variability for all plant traits studied and implications discussed. Additive Main Effect and Multiplicative Interaction (AMMI) analysis however revealed that the variations recorded were substantially attributable to genotypic component (70–80%) and less of environment (0.7–7.0%), a measure of phenotypic stability of these cowpea lines. However, seed yield and yield components vary significantly across the three locations, which further emphasize the important role of soil and climatic variables to cowpea production. In this study, two varieties (IT07K-299-6 and IT11K-61-82) consistently combined high seed yield (> 2 tons/ha) with precocity across the three locations, and could be multiplied for distribution to farmers as short-term intervention for yield increase. Reduced seed viability of these varieties reflects seed storage challenge in cowpea farming. In addition to significant contributions of some yield components to seed yield, there was evidence of strong association between precocity and high yield, and its implication for cowpea improvement discussed.
Citations
Eight advanced breeding lines of cowpea [
Citations
Poor seed yield remains a great challenge for cowpea production in sub-Sahara Africa and continuous evaluation of available genetic resource to develop high and stable yielding varieties is the panacea to this regional food security conundrum. In this study, 21 cowpea breeding lines were evaluated for phenotypic analysis of seed yield components for two years in a randomized complete block design of 3 replications. All the yield components exhibited significant genotypic variation, while flowering, pod maturity and seed yield traits recorded significant variation for years and its interactions. These cowpeas, which are predominantly early-medium maturing biotypes, exhibited relative phenotypic stability for the yield components across years (seasons) except seed yield, being a final product of complex physiological process. Relationships between flowering/pod maturity and seed size were positive and significant. By contrast, pods/plant, seeds/plant and total seed yield recorded negative correlations with pod maturity. However, seeds/plant and pods/plant are the most contributory components to seed-yield with correlation coefficients of
Citations
First
Prev
