Interspecific Cross-compatibility of Beach Pea (Vigna marina) with Related Vigna Species

Wide hybridization is useful for transferring desirable characters from related species to cultivated ones. The beach pea (Vigna marina) is an unexploited Vigna species having great drought tolerant and salt tolerance capacity. To incorporate these desirable traits into cultivated species, the crosses were made between beach pea and green gram (Vigna radiata) (VBN (Gg) 3) and black gram (VBN 6). No pod set was observed in the above crosses, indicating the presence of cross-incompatibility between these two species. The other crosses and their reciprocals were made between the beach pea with two cowpea genotypes (VBN 1 and IC347367) to investigate their cross compatibility as well as the germination potential of respective F1 hybrid seeds. The hybrids were obtained in both directions, indicating the presence of cross-compatibility between the two species. These results indicated that there is a great opportunity to utilize beach peas in the cowpea genetic improvement programme.