COMBINING ABILITY STUDY AMONG LINES OF COWPEA (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp) FOR YIELD AND YIELD RELATED COMPONENTS

Abstract

The study was carried out to determine the combining ability among lines of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp) for yield and yield related component using (four male and five females) parents, that were mated in a line x tester mating design that generated 29 progenies, to determine mode of gene action, estimate heritability and the association of the measured traits. Significant differences were observed among the studied genotypes implying variation among the genotypes. Genotypes performance across location was significant (P ≤ 0.05) for plant height and yield. The genotype performance across location showed grain weight among the parent ranges from 239.67kg to 279.33kg with Dan’lla (IAR-17-2006) being the highest and the cross IAR-07-105-0 x Ex-Borno recorded highest mean weight of 279.33kg and the least (200kg) was recorded by Dan’lla (IAR-17-2006) x Dan Wuri-11 (IAR-07-023). This study also revealed that both additive and non-additive gene action were important in controlling yield and other agronomic traits. The male parent IT93K-452-1 is good general combiner for plant height (-3.93; P<0.01). IT93K-452-1 is good general combiner for number of branches (-3.30; P<0.01) and grain weight (-55.38; P<0.01). The female parent Itas Early was good general combiner for leaf area (-11.34; P<0.01), number of branches (-3.30 P<0.01) and average pod length (-2.76; P<0.01) but for grain weight Dan Wuri-11 (IAR-07-023) (-55.34; P<0.01) is a good general combiner. The crosses IAR-07-105-0 x Itas Early, IAR-07-105-0 x Bahaushe IAR-17-008, IAR-07-105-0 x Kanannado White (IAR-011-084), and IAR-07-105-0 x Dan Wuri-11 (IAR-07-023) were good specific combiners for plant height were as IAR-07-105-0 x Bahaushe IAR-17-008 were the best specific combiners for number of leaves and IAR-07-105-0 x Bahaushe IAR-17-008, IAR-07-105-0 x Kanannado White (IAR-011-084), IAR-07-105-0 x Ex-Borno and IAR-07-105-0 x Dan Wuri-11 (IAR-07-023) for leaf area and so also IAR-07-105-0 x Itas Early, IAR-07-105-0 x Bahaushe IAR-17-008, IAR-07-105-0 x Kanannado White (IAR-011-084), IAR-07-105-0 x Ex-Borno and IAR-07-105-0 x Dan Wuri-11 (IAR-07-023) are thoroughly good specific combiner and also pod weight and average pod length are specific combiner were grain weight was significant and positively correlated with number of leaves chaff weight and average pod length, path coefficient analysis revealed that the only trait that had direct positive contributors to grain weight in was chaff weight (0.833).