Published Paper Details:

A green house and field experiments were carried out to study alpha nano spin exposure on the yield and yield components of 10 cowpea seed varieties treated at 0 min, 20 min, 40 min, and 60 min time exposure respectively. Nine (9) of these varieties were obtained from Institution of Agriculture Research (IAR), Zaria and one local variety from Nasarawa Agricultural Development Programmed (NADP), Lafia which served as the control. The experiments were conducted at the Botanical Garden, Federal University Lafia and Green house, College of Agriculture, Lafia. The trials were established using randomized complete block design with three replications. Analysis of variance for varieties, environments and varieties-by-environments interaction showed significant difference (P<0.05) for mean number of days to 50% flowering, mean number of days to 50% podding, mean pod length, mean number of seeds per pod, 100 seeds weight and mean grain yield kg/ha. Interactive effects of varieties and environments on alpha nano exposure revealed that Sampea 17 and Sampea 10 had lower number of days to flowering (33.08 and 33.83 days) respectively as compared to the control lafia (54.75 days) while sampea 11 and sampea 8 had the highest number of days (62.58 and 55.33 days) respectively. Number of days to podding were lower for sampea 10 and sampea 17 (47.7 and 49.4 days) respectively which were significant different (P<0.05) from that of the control variety Lafia (61.3days). Also, sampea 10 and sampea11 had more 100 seeds weight (17.44 g and 17.27g) than the control Lafia (16.03) and sampea 7 (15.44) and Sampea 5 (16.03) which recorded lower weights. The interaction between treatments and environments were also significant at (P<0.05) but no significant difference (P>0.05) for the interaction between varieties and treatments. The results demonstrate the potentials of improving cowpea grain yield and quality using alpha nano spin exposure. Samples performed differently in the different location which shows the importance of location in genotype x environment interaction effects.