Cowpea: a legume crop for a challenging environment

Abstract

Cowpea is a grain legume native from Africa and is a primary source of protein for millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the developing world. The main important characteristics of this crop include a good protein quality with a high nutritional value, its nitrogen-fixing ability, and an ability to be more drought- and heat-tolerant than most of its legume relatives. In a research perspective, studies of cowpea are relatively scarce, despite its relevance to agriculture in the developing world and its resilience to stress. The present review provides an overview of different aspects of cowpea, with a special emphasis on the molecular markers for assessing genetic diversity, as well as on biochemical and transcriptomic data with respect to evaluating cowpea drought stress tolerance. The integration of both datasets will be useful for the improvement of cowpea because research on drought stress tolerance is of major interest for this crop in a challenging environment. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry.

Evaluating stress responses in cowpea under drought stress

“…Responses to drought are complex and different mechanisms have been developed by plants to adapt and survive during drought periods (Carvalho et al, 2017;Cruz de Carvalho, 2008;Merwad et al, 2018). Drought stressed plants reveal several morphological, physiological, biochemical, and molecular changes that adversely affect their development, growth and productivity Toscano et al, 2016).…”

Investigation on Various Aboveground Traits to Identify Drought Tolerance in Cowpea Seedlings

“…Cultivars that can tolerate limited water supplies at early vegetative growth could be an affordable solution to overcome drought conditions. Reports showed that impacts of drought on crops such as cowpea have been acute in tropical and subtropical regions (Carvalho et al, 2017).…”

Pathways to Improve Energy Efficiency and Minimize Environmental Footprints of GHG Emission of Energy Inputs Used in Cowpea Production in Niger State of Nigeria

“…In the literature review, studies which applied DEA to investigate GHG emission reduction in agricultural units in different countries on crop production and animal husbandry are few, and examples of such studies are Komleh et al [12], Komleh et al [13], Khoshnevisan et al [5], Khoshnevisan et al [6], Soni et al [19], Pelesaraei et al [9], Kordkheili et al [14], Sadiq et al [16], Sadiq et al [15], Sadiq et al [17], Onuk et al [11], Singh and Mukhi [18], Carvalho et al [7] and Kyei et al [20].…”

“…The performance assessment may be carried out by comparing a particular system with key competitors having best performance within the same group or another group performing similar functions, a process called benchmarking [4] [7] [18] and [20]. …”