Author

Tulika Mishra1, Shail Pande 2 and Neha Kumari Sonkar

Abstract

Pulses are a great source of proteins but pulse crops are heavily damaged by various pathogens in agricultural fields. Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) is an important leguminous crop belonging to the family fabaceae cultivated in all part of India and worldwide for green pods as pulse. Being leguminous crop the roots of plants have nodules which help in nitrogen fixation and improving fertility of soil. A variety of viruses are disseminated by seeds of infected plants to long distances. Localized spread from weeds or seed-infected crop plants is sometimes accomplished by vectors. The extent of crop damage is usually intrinsic part of plant genetic susceptibility to viruses (and virus complexes) or its sensitivity to infection. Virus infection adversely affects all the parts of plant including nodules of roots. Present study deals with the leghaemoglobin content and number of Rhizobium in root nodules of Cowpea Golden Mosaic Virus infected plant. It was found that infected plant's nodule have lowered amount of leghaemoglobin content and they harbor less number of bacteria when compared with healthy control plants and this adversely affects nitrogen fixation by infected plant.

Pages: 177-180

Doi Number 10.5958/2455-7218.2022.00010.9

Keywords Cowpea, Cowpea Golden Mosaic Virus, Nodulation, Leghaemoglobin