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Breeding of Vegetable Cowpea for Nutrition and Climate Resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa: Progress, Opportunities, and Challenges

Currently, the world population is increasing, and humanity is facing food and nutritional scarcity. Climate change and variability are a major threat to global food and nutritional security, reducing crop productivity in the tropical and subtropical regions of the globe. Cowpea has the potential to...

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Autores principales: Mekonnen, Tesfaye Walle, Gerrano, Abe Shegro, Mbuma, Ntombokulunga Wedy, Labuschagne, Maryke Tine
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9230997/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35736733
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants11121583
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author Mekonnen, Tesfaye Walle
Gerrano, Abe Shegro
Mbuma, Ntombokulunga Wedy
Labuschagne, Maryke Tine
author_facet Mekonnen, Tesfaye Walle
Gerrano, Abe Shegro
Mbuma, Ntombokulunga Wedy
Labuschagne, Maryke Tine
author_sort Mekonnen, Tesfaye Walle
collection PubMed
description Currently, the world population is increasing, and humanity is facing food and nutritional scarcity. Climate change and variability are a major threat to global food and nutritional security, reducing crop productivity in the tropical and subtropical regions of the globe. Cowpea has the potential to make a significant contribution to global food and nutritional security. In addition, it can be part of a sustainable food system, being a genetic resource for future crop improvement, contributing to resilience and improving agricultural sustainability under climate change conditions. In malnutrition prone regions of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries, cowpea has become a strategic dryland legume crop for addressing food insecurity and malnutrition. Therefore, this review aims to assess the contribution of cowpea to SSA countries as a climate-resilient crop and the existing production challenges and perspectives. Cowpea leaves and immature pods are rich in diverse nutrients, with high levels of protein, vitamins, macro and micronutrients, minerals, fiber, and carbohydrates compared to its grain. In addition, cowpea is truly a multifunctional crop for maintaining good health and for reducing non-communicable human diseases. However, as a leafy vegetable, cowpea has not been researched and promoted sufficiently because it has not been promoted as a food security crop due to its low yield potential, susceptibility to biotic and abiotic stresses, quality assurance issues, policy regulation, and cultural beliefs (it is considered a livestock feed). The development of superior cowpea as a leafy vegetable can be approached in different ways, such as conventional breeding and gene stacking, speed breeding, mutation breeding, space breeding, demand-led breeding, a pan-omics approach, and local government policies. The successful breeding of cowpea genotypes that are high-yielding with a good nutritional value as well as having resistance to biotics and tolerant to abiotic stress could also be used to address food security and malnutrition-related challenges in sub-Saharan Africa.
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spelling pubmed-92309972022-06-25 Breeding of Vegetable Cowpea for Nutrition and Climate Resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa: Progress, Opportunities, and Challenges Mekonnen, Tesfaye Walle Gerrano, Abe Shegro Mbuma, Ntombokulunga Wedy Labuschagne, Maryke Tine Plants (Basel) Review Currently, the world population is increasing, and humanity is facing food and nutritional scarcity. Climate change and variability are a major threat to global food and nutritional security, reducing crop productivity in the tropical and subtropical regions of the globe. Cowpea has the potential to make a significant contribution to global food and nutritional security. In addition, it can be part of a sustainable food system, being a genetic resource for future crop improvement, contributing to resilience and improving agricultural sustainability under climate change conditions. In malnutrition prone regions of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries, cowpea has become a strategic dryland legume crop for addressing food insecurity and malnutrition. Therefore, this review aims to assess the contribution of cowpea to SSA countries as a climate-resilient crop and the existing production challenges and perspectives. Cowpea leaves and immature pods are rich in diverse nutrients, with high levels of protein, vitamins, macro and micronutrients, minerals, fiber, and carbohydrates compared to its grain. In addition, cowpea is truly a multifunctional crop for maintaining good health and for reducing non-communicable human diseases. However, as a leafy vegetable, cowpea has not been researched and promoted sufficiently because it has not been promoted as a food security crop due to its low yield potential, susceptibility to biotic and abiotic stresses, quality assurance issues, policy regulation, and cultural beliefs (it is considered a livestock feed). The development of superior cowpea as a leafy vegetable can be approached in different ways, such as conventional breeding and gene stacking, speed breeding, mutation breeding, space breeding, demand-led breeding, a pan-omics approach, and local government policies. The successful breeding of cowpea genotypes that are high-yielding with a good nutritional value as well as having resistance to biotics and tolerant to abiotic stress could also be used to address food security and malnutrition-related challenges in sub-Saharan Africa. MDPI 2022-06-15 /pmc/articles/PMC9230997/ /pubmed/35736733 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants11121583 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Mekonnen, Tesfaye Walle
Gerrano, Abe Shegro
Mbuma, Ntombokulunga Wedy
Labuschagne, Maryke Tine
Breeding of Vegetable Cowpea for Nutrition and Climate Resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa: Progress, Opportunities, and Challenges
title Breeding of Vegetable Cowpea for Nutrition and Climate Resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa: Progress, Opportunities, and Challenges
title_full Breeding of Vegetable Cowpea for Nutrition and Climate Resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa: Progress, Opportunities, and Challenges
title_fullStr Breeding of Vegetable Cowpea for Nutrition and Climate Resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa: Progress, Opportunities, and Challenges
title_full_unstemmed Breeding of Vegetable Cowpea for Nutrition and Climate Resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa: Progress, Opportunities, and Challenges
title_short Breeding of Vegetable Cowpea for Nutrition and Climate Resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa: Progress, Opportunities, and Challenges
title_sort breeding of vegetable cowpea for nutrition and climate resilience in sub-saharan africa: progress, opportunities, and challenges
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9230997/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35736733
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants11121583
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