Estimates of Heritability and Genetic Advance for Yield Components of Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp) under Drought Stress Conditions

Abstract

The study was conducted at the Teaching and Research Farms, Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi, Nigeria. Five Cowpea genotypes (FUAMPEA-1, IT99K-573-1-1, SAMPEA-16, SAMPEA-8, BIU LOCAL) were crossed and advanced to F1, F2, BC1 and BC2 populations using bi-parental mating design. The six generations were evaluated in a Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications. Significant test of the mean performances among the entries showed significant differences among the generations for the characters studied. Wide ranges of narrow sense heritability (18 to 79%), broad sense heritability (21 to 92%) and genetic advance (5.7 to 24.1%) were obtained for characters studied. Broad and narrow sense heritability as well as genetic advance was moderate to high for most of the characters studied such as days to 50% flowering, plant height, days to pod maturity, number of seeds per pod, number of pods per plant, hundred seed weight, root length and grain yield for the three sets of cowpea crosses. The results also revealed the possibility of exploitation for grain yield and drought tolerance in the crosses studied.