Plant & Animal Genomes XV Conference

January 13-17, 2007
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Cowpea Genomic Resources

Michael P. Timko¹ , Xianfeng Chen² , Tom W. Laudeman² , Jianxiong Li¹ , Bhavani S. Gowda¹ , Paul J. Rushton¹ , Thomas A. Spraggins²

¹  Department of Biology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904

²  Academic Computing Health Sciences, Information Technology and Communication, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22908

Cowpea [Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.] is one of the most important food and forage legumes in the semi-arid tropics with 21 million acres grown worldwide and an annual production of 3 million tons. About 80% of cowpea production takes place on subsistence farms in the dry savannah of tropical West and Central Africa. Despite its importance, cowpea has received relatively little attention from a research standpoint and remains to a large extent an underexploited crop. The Cowpea Genomics Initiative (CGI) supported by funding from the Kirkhouse Trust, a UK-based charity, aims to leverage modern molecular-based technologies, in combination with conventional breeding strategies, to increase the speed at which a greater number of superior-performing, well-adapted cowpea varieties containing pyramided agronomic productivity, disease and pest resistance traits can be delivered to local farmers. The Cowpea Genespace/Genomics Knowledge Base (CGKB) is an annotation knowledge base developed under the CGI based on information derived from the sequencing of cowpea genespace sequences (GSS) isolated by methylation filtering of genomic DNA. The CGKB consists of three knowledge bases: GSS annotation and comparative genomics knowledge base, GSS enzyme and metabolic pathway knowledge base, and GSS simple sequence repeats (SSRs) knowledge base for molecular marker discovery. The application of the database and its use for gene identification and marker development in cowpea improvement programs will be discussed.