Inheritance of Time to First Flower in Photo-insensitive Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.)

Early maturity is a relatively important agronomic trait and is important in the adaptation of annual crops, including cowpea to any agro ecological zone. This trait was studied using days to first flowering under screen house condition to determine heterotic effects, heritability and inheritance of early heritable (h2ns) was 98.9% while (h2bs) was 68%. The F1 hybrid performed better than the average parent by 8.82 and 23.3% over the superior parent. Transgressive segregation was observed in the F2 population with plants flowering 9 days earlier than the early parent and 37 days later than the late maturing parent. Inheritance of earliness was observed to be controlled by duplicate dominant epistasis with late flowering partially dominant over early flowering.