Identification and Introgression of African Cowpea Alleles to Develop Larger Seeded California Blackeyes

This poster describes an effort to develop larger seeded varieties of blackeyed cowpeas (Vigna unguiculata ssp. unguiculata) for California production.  We applied 1,536-plex SNP genotyping to 8 recombinant inbred populations and a subset of the USDA core collection to associate regions of the cowpea genome with seed size.  We are in the process of using multiple cycles of foreground and background selection to breed a blackeye seed type with large seed alleles donated by a South/East African cultivar.  Based on association studies we expect our targeted inbred variety to have a seed size of ~28g/100 seeds which would be ~35% larger than the recurrent parent's seed.  Our current early generation breeding lines match this theoretical genetic gain where homozygotes (+/+) average 28g, heterozygotes (+/-) average 26g, and homozygotes (-/-) average 22g per 100 seeds.  We are currently pursuing another cycle marker-assisted selection to recover the blackeye seed type before field testing.