Abstract

Field experiment was conducted during 2013/14 rainy season in two selected districts of north western Ethiopia with the objective of evaluate the adaptability and yield performance of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) varieties under sole cropping. Treatments consisted of seven cowpea (TVU, Bekur, 9333, 9334, 12688, Kenkety and Black eye bean) varieties in randomized complete block design with three replication per district. Variety showed highly significance difference in their Dry Matter Yield (DMY) and the value ranged 2.07 to 4.19 t/ha. Cowpea variety 9334 showed highly significance (4.19) difference in its DMY as compared to12688 (3.09), black eye bean (2.85), TVU (2.79) and bekur (2.07t/ha). Seed yield also showed highly significance difference by variety and district. Cowpea variety 9333 gave significantly higher (1235.4kg/ha) seed yield compared to TVU (733.3), 9334 (722.9), black eye bean (511.8) and bekur 487.5 kg/ha. There was also significant variation between the number of seeds per pod obtained from kenkety and 12688 with that of most cowpea varieties. Black eye bean significantly differed from all cowpea varieties evaluated in its thousand seed weight. Based on yield data kenkety 9333 and 9334 recommended as alternative legume forage crops from cowpea varieties evaluated under sole cropping for Jabitehnan and South Achefer areas.

Keywords:

Districts, dry matter yield, legume forage crop, seed yield, sole cropping,

References

Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

Open Access Policy

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Copyright

The authors have no competing interests.