Advancing the Cowpea Genome for Food Security

Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata [L.] Walp.) is the number one source of protein in the human diet in sub-Saharan Africa, and an important climate-resilient legume crop the USA and elsewhere. The cowpea team at UC Riverside operates a breeding program for California and is partnered with leading cowpea breeders in West Africa (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal) and Mozambique, supported by funding from USAID (Feed the Future), NSF BREAD, CGIAR, the California Dry Beans Advisory Board and Hatch Act Projects in the University of California. Cowpea now has a 50,000-SNP iSelect genotyping assay (Cowpea Consortium Array; Muñoz-Amatriaín et al., 2016, The Plant Journal 10.1111/tpj.13404), a reference genome sequence composed of 11 pseudomolecules (see poster by Lonardi et al.), an ever-expanding list of marker-trait associations, and web-based tools to access existing and new genetic information. These resources are being used to address a range of needs in the breeding and germplasm management programs including pedigree validation, establishment of pure seed stocks, mapping of traits, crossing and progeny selection decisions and population genetic analyses. Examples will be presented to illustrate the improved precision and clarity that are enabled by the new genome resources. Given cowpea’s relevance to food and nutritional security, its close relationship to soybean and other pulses, its facile genetic system, and the ease with which the plant can be grown in the field, greenhouse or growth chamber, cowpea merits consideration as a premiere model plant for the 21^st century.