Cow pea (Vigna unguiculata) is a long bean with thin pods and is commonly grown throughout India and belongs to the family Fabaceae. Cowpea is cultivated in India for grains, vegetables and haulms as fodder. To sow one hectare area a quantity of 15 kg of seeds are required. The seeds should be treated with Rhizobium bacterial culture 600 g before direct sowing. Ripe and dry pods are harvested at half to two thirds of maturity by manually for seed collection. The seed production fields are to be inspected by seed certification agencies at appropriate stages of the crop growth as per seed and field certification standards. The cloth bags are used for storage of small quantity seeds, gunny bags are used for storage of large quantity and polythene bags are used for long term storage. The seeds are treated with one per cent of activated clay by weight of the seed or two grams of carbendazim 50% WP for one kilo gram of seed and combination of five parts of calcium hypochlorite + four parts of lime + one part of leaf powder of Albizzia amara @ 3 g/kg of seed. These pre-treated seeds are stored for eight months in cloth bag and 16 months in water proof bags without bruchid infestation. Few attempts were made to develop micro-propagation protocols in cow pea and there is no commercial tissue culture techniques followed.
Propagation Techniques, Vegetable, Cowpea, Seed storage
Choudhary, Biswajit. 2000. Vegetables. National Book Trust, New Delhi, India.
Meera V. Menon, D. Bhaskar Reddy, P. Prameela and Jayasree Krishnankutty. 2010. Seed production in vegetable cowpea [Vigna unguiculata (l.) Walp.] under integrated nutrient management. Legume Res., 33 (4): 299 – 301.
Parthasarathy, V.A. and A.K. Chakraborthi. 2003. Cowpea. In. Vegetable crops. Eds. Bose, T.K., J. Kabir, T.K. Maity, V.A. Parthasarathy and M.G. Som. Naya Udyog, Kolkata.
Pellegrineschi, A. 1997. In vitro plant regeneration via organogenesis of cowpea [Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.]. Plant Cell Reports, 17(2): 89-95.
