The present study was conducted to investigate the nature of variability in cow
pea. These variabilities could be utilize to develop new inbred lines. Pedigree
selection program with self pollination was used. Five inbred lines were obtained as a result of pedigree selection program from
four cultivares (populations) of cow pea. These cultivares were: Cream 7 (A), Fetriat
(B), Cyprus (C) and Ookki 301 (0). The obtained five inbred lines were crossed in a diallel crosses mating design
excluding reciprocal hybrids to obtaine 10 F 1 hybrids. The results cleared that the
means of the Fl hybrids, significantly exceeded the mid parents (M.P.) for all studied
traits. The obtained heterosis values ranged from -3.42% to 45.45% for days to
flowering (O.F.) and number of branches per plant (No. B.lP.) traits, respectively. The results also revealed that the magnitudes, of non-additive genetic
variances including dominance (clo) were larger than those additive genetic variances
(cr²A) for most studied traits. The obtained values of additive genetic variances could
not be neglected. The calculated values of heritability in broad sense ranged from 67.82% to
94.60% for number of seeds per pod (No. S.lP.) and plant length (P.L.) traits,
respectively. In the same time, the highest value of narrow sense heritability was:
(49.11 %) for seed yield per plant (S.Y.lP.) trait. The results illustrated the presence of genotypic (rg) and phenotypic (rph)
correlations among pairs of studied traits. The highest values of correlation coefficient
were: 0.72 and 0.81, among weight of 100 seeds 0N/100/S) and seed yield per plant
(S.Y.lP.) for rg and rph, respectively. This investigation could be continued to improve
of the studied traits through selection in segregated generations.