Cowpea(
Vigna unguiculata
L.Walp) is an important food security crop. It provides
food and income for many small-holder farmers in Africa. As a food source, the grains
contain large quantities of protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, and fiber. In spite of the
high nutritional value of cowpea, the crop is underutilized in most households and
commercial eating houses in Nigeria. Several factors have been reported as constraints
affecting the consumption and utilization of the crop in Nigeria, but have not been
documented. This research was conducted to identify the factors affecting the
utilization of the crop and determine the stakeholders’ preferences that will increase the
demand and consumption of cowpea grains in Nigeria. The study was carried out in
Ibadan in Oyo State and Zaria in Kaduna State in Nigeria, with a total of 318
respondents. A descriptive research design was used to collect data which were
analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) IBM version 20 and
Microsoft Excel spread sheet. From the social demography result, the respondents were
from six different category of stakeholders in the cowpea value chain mainly from
breeders (3.7%), farmers (36.0%), marketers (12.7%), food vendors (6.7%),
nutritionists (2.6%) and consumers (38.9%). This implies that the respondents were
knowledgeable about the factors affecting the cowpea utilization. The two factors
identified to affect the utilization of cowpea were culinary qualities (63.0% of
respondents) and removing dirt (37.0% of respondents). Among the culinary qualities,
the major quality preferred was reducing the cooking time (42.9% of respondents),
followed by improved taste (31.7% of respondents), and value added products such as
cowpea in powdered form (19.0% of respondents), and canned cowpea (6.4% of
respondents). A total of 47.2% of respondents preferred the duration for cooking
cowpea for 21-30 minutes as against the 40-60 minutes most cowpea varieties cook for.
These findings indicate that cooking time is still the major factor affecting the
utilization of cowpea grains. Therefore, improving this quality and other utilization
attributes will increase the demand and consumption of cowpea grains.
