Induced Mutation for Accelerated Varietal Development in Cowpea for Africa

Climate change is impacting food production globally. With an ever-increasing global population and changing diets, the demand for pulses and grain legumes is rising swiftly. In the mixed and agro- pastoral dryland ecologies of SSA and SA, cereals and legumes are grown in mixed crop-livestock farming systems, in rotation or as intercrops and hence have specific significance to food, nutrition, income security and livelihood options for smallholder farming communities in the focus geographies. These agroecologies are where poverty, malnutrition, climate change and soil degradation are among the most acute globally. To date, expanding land area under cultivation is the main pathway for increased agricultural production, however it is not a sustainable solution. Therefore, alternative strategies are required to sustainably raise crop yields in the face of climate change, involving a combination of interventions including novel, climate-adaptive germplasm delivered as customer- demanded varieties with enhanced performance and stability.
This CRP aims at piloted enhancements of high-performing crop varieties of cowpea to create improved genetic variation with emphasis on trait deployment and accelerated delivery of novel induced variation to core breeding efforts. The nuclear -induced genetic variation integrated with novel and more effective functional genomics approaches will be used to identify superior alleles and deploying them in the breeding pipelines supporting the adaptation of legume cropping systems to rapid climate change. This adaptation is achieved both through the steady accumulation of novel alleles with small individual effects on biotic and abiotic stress tolerance, and through genetic association studies the discovery and integration of rare but valuable alleles with large effects on plant performance under severe stresses.  Furthermore, the combination of shorter cycle times (more generations per year) and stringent stage gate systems to efficiently discard unpromising variants can help establish a robust product development pipeline for this crop. 
 This project intends to make exhaustive use of existing and novel genetic diversity, to generate international public goods in the form of breeding lines of cowpea and genetic associations for increased availability of preferred varieties to farmers and grain to consumers. Two distinct implementation tracks will be addressed over three years for short-, mid- and longer-term impacts, namely, (1) application of induced genetic variation and acceleration of breeding pipelines, and (2) establishment of genetic associations towards precision breeding in longer term ( > 3 years).
The application of nuclear-induced mutations to increase novel genetic variations will provide cowpea breeders with an expanded spectrum of traits for breeding and selection. These traits encompass enhanced yield, resistance to diseases and pests, tolerance to drought, improved nutritional quality, and adaptability to varying climates. By employing mutation breeding techniques alongside state-of-the-art tools for trait discovery and utilization, the pace of genetic improvements in this very important legume crop within mixed cereal-legume systems in specific agroecological contexts will be significantly accelerated.
In the short-to mid-term, existing breeding populations will be strengthened using induced genetic variation and improved varieties with farmer-preferred traits. This should lead to the development of superior varieties through accelerated breeding. For the longer term, genetic associations will be established for highly preferred traits for eventual deployment in marker-assisted breeding, CRISPR based precision breeding for Member States interested in deploying new genomic techniques and/or genomic selection to accelerate development and deployment of varieties that can withstand more heat, less moisture, greater pest and disease pressure, and extreme weather events like droughts and/or floods.