What is "cowpea"

Cowpea \Cow"pea`\ (kou"p[=e]`), n.

1. The seed of one or more leguminous plants of the genus Dolichos; also, the plant itself. Many varieties are cultivated in the southern part of the United States.

2. (Bot.) A leguminous plant ( Vigna Sinensis, syn. Vigna Catjang) found throughout the tropics of the Old World. It is extensively cultivated in the Southern United States for fodder, and the seed is used as food for man.

n. the black-eyed pea, (taxlink Vigna unguiculata species noshow=1)

1. n. fruit or seed of the cowpea plant [syn: black-eyed pea]

2. sprawling Old World annual cultivated especially in southern United States for food and forage and green manure [syn: cowpea plant, black-eyed pea, Vigna unguiculata, Vigna sinensis]

3. eaten fresh as shell beans or dried [syn: black-eyed pea]

The cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) is one of several species of the widely cultivated genus Vigna. Four subspecies are recognised, of which three are cultivated (more exist, including V. textilis, V. pubescens, and V. sinensis):

Cowpeas are one of the most important food legume crops in the semiarid tropics covering Asia, Africa, southern Europe, and Central and South America. A drought-tolerant and warm-weather crop, cowpeas are well-adapted to the drier regions of the tropics, where other food legumes do not perform well. It also has the useful ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen through its root nodules, and it grows well in poor soils with more than 85% sand and with less than 0.2% organic matter and low levels of phosphorus. In addition, it is shade tolerant, so is compatible as an intercrop with maize, millet, sorghum, sugarcane, and cotton. This makes cowpeas an important component of traditional intercropping systems, especially in the complex and elegant subsistence farming systems of the dry savannas in sub-Saharan Africa. In these systems the haulm (dried stalks) of cowpea is a valuable by-product, used as animal feed.

Research in Ghana found that selecting early generations of cowpea crops to increase yield is not an effective strategy. Francis Padi from the Savannah Agricultural Research Institute in Tamale, Ghana, writing in Crop Science, suggests other methods such as bulk breeding are more efficient in developing high-yield varieties.

According to the USDA food database, the leaves of the cowpea plant have the highest percentage of calories from protein among vegetarian foods.