Weed Management Practices in Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L.): A Review

Cowpea is an important pulse crop. Weeds posses a severe problem in cowpea production and, if it is not managed with best management practices, can act as a hibernating agent and reduce yield and quality. An attempt was made to collect published data on weed management practices aimed at maximizing yield of cowpea. This work was done at Department of Agronomy, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. The literature search was done during July 2023 to January 2024. About 120 review and research papers were screened from various databases, including the TNAU library, Google Scholar, Scopus, Research Gate, ARCC journals and 75 papers were used to write this paper. This review article documents information gathered on importance of cowpea, nutritional profile of cowpea, anti-nutritional factors, health benefits, critical period of weed control, yield reduction percentage, weed flora in cowpea, SSB, mulching, manual weeding, cultural practices, chemical methods and IWM in cowpea was comprehensively presented.