Enabling Tools for Modern Breeding of Cowpea for Biotic Stress Resistance - Translational Genomics for Crop Breeding: Biotic Stress - page 197

polymorphic in the target population. A suite of
SNP markers for these resistance traits (flanking
markers) would be chosen along with a group
of evenly distributed polymorphic 'background'
markers every 5 to 20 cM along each linkage
group, depending on the desired marker density,
available polymorphism, breeding strategy, and
budget. Access to reliable, precise, and reason-
ably priced genotyping services will be essential
if MAB is to become a routine methodology in
cowpea breeding programs.

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Summary and Conclusions

In less than seven years, cowpea has moved from
the status of an 'orphan crop' (Delmer 2005)
with only scarce genomic resources to a situ-
ation where modern breeding is being imple-
mented. In the near future, other advanced breed-
ing approaches such as genome-wide selection
(Bernardo and Yu 2007) should be explored if
these are shown to be effective in other crops.
While cowpea breeding is poised to become
much more effective with the new tools that are
available, at the same time it is increasingly more
complex. Significant increases in training and
funding for developing country NARS cowpea
breeding programs will be required for mean-
ingful adoption of new genetic tools and accel-
eration of genetic improvement.

Acknowledgements

Generous funding from the CGIAR Generation
Challenge Programme and the USAID Dry Grain
Pulses CRSP to a group of dedicated scientists
is gratefully acknowledged.

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