International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) is currently implementing modern cowpea breeding approaches to develop varieties with increased productivity.
Cowpea is one of the Institute‘s mandate crops, produced to reduce hunger and malnutrition in Africa, where it is widely consumed. It is produced in 45 countries of the continent, and five of the top cowpea-producing countries are in West Africa.
Cowpea contributes to CGIAR’s impact on five key impact areas—climate adaptation and mitigation; nutrition, health, and food security; poverty reduction, livelihoods, and jobs; gender equality, youth, and social inclusion; and environmental health and biodiversity.
In a recent virtual seminar, IITA Cowpea Breeder, Ousmane Boukar, shared the objectives and activities of the IITA breeding programme in implementing modern breeding approaches to develop varieties with increased productivity.
Despite the constraints to cowpea production, such as diseases, parasitic weeds, insects, and abiotic stresses, some achievements have mitigated their efforts on cowpea production.
The diversity and population structure of cowpea germplasm conserved by the genetic resources at GRC and other sources have been evaluated. Some have been screened to detect virus-resistant lines.
The new breeding approaches include the development of product profiles: extra-early to early varieties, medium maturing varieties, and late-maturing varieties, all with producers’ and consumers’ preferred traits.
Other additions are improving the stage-gate system and variety replacement strategy, developing mid-density genotyping services for cowpea, and developing QA/QC SNPs.
To implement modern breeding approaches, the breeding team has developed standard operating procedures for all major breeding activities, acquired breeding equipment for increased breeding efficiency, improved experimental designs and data analytics, and developed digital seed inventory systems.
As a personal contribution, Boukar has made 21 oral presentations, most presented while representing IITA; reviewed about 20 manuscripts for various scientific journals; written 22 journal articles in Thompson-indexed journals; and contributed to 15 pre-proposals and concept notes as well as 19 proposals of which 12 were funded to the tune of about $7.0 million.
Highlighting the plans for the cowpea breeding programs, Boukar shared that the team will implement a well defined stage-gate system; improve market segments and target products, work on optimizing breeding pipelines, map and identify market segments from end-users to producers and consumers; refine and strengthen cowpea breeding network; and strengthen partnerships with NARS, SMEs, and advanced research institutions.
“The Cowpea breeding programme has made significant progress in modernizing our breeding strategies. The team is highly committed to the modernization of the program. Hence, with efficient technical support from EiB and Bayer and financial support of donors, best practices in modern breeding will be adopted’’, Boukar said.
Rounding off the seminar, Michael Abberton– Director of IITA Western Africa Hub, commended Boukar for the detailed presentation and appreciated participants’ engagement.
