Agromorphological traits contributing to the selection of high yielding Cowpea genotypes in Côte d’Ivoire

Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp.) is an important household staple in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), particularly in West Africa. The objective of this study was to identify the agromorphological traits that contribute to high yield for exploitable in breeding programmes in Côte d’Ivoire. A study was conducted at the Peleforo GON COULIBALY University Botanical Garden, in Côte d’Ivoire involving 32 cowpea accessions from the in-situ collection of Peleforo GON COULIBALY University. The accessions were evaluated in a Fisher block design with three replications on the basis of 16 quantitative variables. The results of the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) confirmed this morphological variability at 73.78%. Hierarchical Ascending Classification classified accessions into three distinct diversity groups according to yield. Group 1 includes accessions with high yield (3728.75 kg/ha), followed by group 2 (2693.93 kg/ha) and group 3 (1620.28 kg/ha). Accessions NFE011, NTE015, NTE02 and NKO03 from group 1 were identified as high-yielding accessions, with respective mean yields of 3855.07, 3737.30, 3668.89 and 3653.74 kg/ha. Regression model indicates that traits including plant width, number of nodes per plant, pod size and number per plant and 100-seed weight were the most significant contributors to grain yield. These results suggest that the selection of high-yielding accessions could be improved by focusing on these specific agromorphological traits.