“…This relatively low number of cowpea lines expressing resistance to the root rot disease demonstrates the difficulty in sourcing cowpea with high resistance levels to M. phaseolina ( Ndiaye, 2007 ; Ndiaye et al., 2010 ; Muchero et al., 2011 ; Ouédraogo et al., 2021 ). The challenge faced in finding sources of resistance to M. phaseolina is, however, not limited to cowpea since similar challenges have been reported for other grain legumes such as soybean ( Smith and Carvil, 1997 ; Pawlowski et al., 2015 ; Coser et al., 2017 ; Amrate et al., 2019 ), bean ( Mayek-Pérez et al., 2001a ; Hernandez-Delgado et al., 2009 ), mungbean ( Pandey et al., 2021 ) and black gram ( Iqbal et al., 2010 ; Elmerich et al., 2022 ). The relatively few genotypes with resistance to the root rot disease also further emphasise the challenges faced in getting sources of resistance that may be used to improve field resistance of farmer-preferred but susceptible cultivars to the disease.…”