Identification of Genetic Variation Associated With Heat Tolerance in Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp.)

Heat tolerance is an important trait in cowpea, a crop that is the primary protein source for a large portion of the human population in sub-Saharan Africa. Cultivated, landrace, semi-wild, and wild cowpea grow across the region in diverse climatic conditions. This study used environmental association (envGWAS) and allele-frequency outlier approaches across a panel of 580 gene bank accessions to identify genomic regions associated with adaptation to heat and limited precipitation. Allele frequency outliers are detected independent of potential selective factors driving differentiation; we used a ranking-based approach to identify the climate variables most associated with variants among outliers. Precipitation-related variables dominated the signals we identified for envGWAS and allele frequency outliers. We identified variants on all 11 chromosomes that are putatively associated with cowpea adaptation to higher-temperature environments. The overlap between variants associated with low precipitation and high temperature suggests that these traits may be inextricably linked in cowpea. The Sahel region is the source of many accessions with derived variants associated with high temperatures, suggesting that accessions from this region could contribute heat tolerance alleles for cowpea improvement.