Abstract

Biometric analysis is of great importance for the evaluation of the characteristics of the seeds, being used to predict the physiological aspect. In this context, the objective was to study the biometry of seeds of cowpea bean varieties cultivated by family farmers in the Brazilian Northeast. The work was carried out from April to July 2018, consisting of the harvesting of cowpea bean seeds in the agroecological production area, of the region of Apodi, Northeast Brazil. A completely randomized design with six treatments (owl, canapum, lizão, always green, cow’s rib plus cultivar BRS potiguar) and six replicates of 100 seeds was used. A completely randomized design with six treatments and six replicates of 100 seeds was used. The evaluated characteristics were: length and width of seeds, expressed in mm; length/width ratio of seeds, expressed in mm; weight of one hundred seeds, expressed in g; weight of one thousand seeds, expressed in grams and quantity of seeds per kg, expressed in units kg^-1. There was a statistical difference between the varieties of cowpea for the biometric characteristics studied. The cowpea variety was statistically superior to the others, for the characteristics, seed length (11.37 mm), length (2.14 mm) length ratio, weight of one hundred seeds (31.16 g) and weight of one thousand seeds (312.46 g). The BRS potiguar variety was statistically superior to the characteristic number of seeds per kilo (5099.16 units kg^-1).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.