How to Treat Cowpea Fusarium Wilt? A Complete Guide to Prevention and Control Methods

Cowpea is a common vegetable on the market, and many people enjoy eating it, so how do you treat cowpea that has caught wilt disease? Let's take a look together.

Cowpea (commonly known as "cai dou" in Taiwanese) has a growing season from April to September, and is an important edible pod vegetable in Taiwan, China, during the summer. "San Chi Qing Pi" is the most common cowpea variety, with the main production areas in Kaohsiung and Pingtung. But over the past decade, cowpea has been severely damaged by wilt disease, with massive die-offs occurring six to seven weeks after planting, right at the flowering stage. Field control measures have limited effect, and there is no cure, so farmers regard it as "legume cancer," leaving many farmers at their wits' end and gradually reducing their willingness to plant.

Zhu Yaling, an assistant researcher at the Kaohsiung Agricultural Improvement Station, said that long-term cultivation of the soil accumulates fungi, and the pathogenic bacteria dwelling in the soil invade the cowpea roots, destroy the vascular bundles that transport water, and spread upward. In the early stages of the disease, the leaves curl and wilt, and in the later stages the entire plant dies. Because cowpea farmers lack effective field control methods and wilt disease damage is too severe, many farmers still apply pesticides, but these are all ineffective applications.

In 2016, the Kaohsiung Agricultural Improvement Station officially launched its "wilt-resistant grafted seedling technology," which has already been transferred to Hetian Seedling Farm. Zhu Yaling mentioned that a cowpea plant originally cost about 0.4 yuan, and after the technology transfer, a grafted cowpea seedling sells for 6 yuan, 15 times more. She once worried that farmers would not accept it, but in the past two years many people have inquired about grafted seedlings, and seedling growers even cannot meet demand. The owner of an organic farm said that despite good planting management, there was nothing to be done about cowpea wilt disease. After trying wilt-resistant grafted cowpea seedlings, she found that the cowpea's disease resistance was noticeably improved and the plants no longer died off.
Now you know how cowpea should be managed.