Climate change is the major, overriding environmental issue of our time, and the single greatest challenge facing decision makers at many levels. Without drastic action today, adapting to the impacts in the future will be more difficult and costly. Key informant interview, focus group discussion (n=7) and household survey (n=150) were undertaken to assess local peoples’ perception on Climate Change, its impact and adaptive strategies. Meteorological data from 1987 to 2017 were used to analyze climatic trends. These data shows that average temperature has increased from 1987-2017 by 0.0146 °C/yr. and annual rainfall has decreased from 1987-2017 by 0.6507 mm/yr. Majority of the respondents (56%) were unknown about climate change. Weather related disasters, mosquito/other insects, invasive species were found highly increased compared to before. The most common adaptation options include using weed control, compost manure, economic diversification, storage of energy, changing planting and harvesting date, crop diversification etc. However, lack of information concerning climate change, agricultural pests and diseases, lack of education, no access to sufficient seeds and fertilizers, no access to sufficient land, no access to credit were major constraints of adaptation and institutions such as School, Mother’s group and Rural Municipality, DFO, INGO like UNDP, WASH are assisting in Climate Change adaptation.

Nigeria’s restricted data on trait associations in cowpea genotypes has required setting up a study in this region to better understand the interactions between cowpea characteristics. The objectives of this study were therefore to assess the level of genetic variability and inter-character association among accessions of cowpea. Eight selected accessions from IITA were evaluated in the field in a Randomized Completely Block Design (RCBD) with three replications between September and December, 2018. Each replicate comprised eight accessions in plots of 5 m x 1 m dimension each; accessions were sown at 30 cm intra and 50 cm inter row spacing with 1 m separation between the accessions. Sixteen (16) quantitative traits were evaluated using five plants per accession per replicate. Significant differences were observed among accessions for most studied traits. Phenotypic variance was higher than genotypic variance for traits evaluated. High broad sense heritability and genetic advance as percent of mean were observed for emergence percentage, seeds per pod, seed weight; the seeds per plant had positive correlation with pod per plant and seed yield, indicating that selection for these will result in increase in yield. PCs 1 and 2 (with eigen value >1) accounted for more than 75.63% of the total variations among accessions. Different patterns of associations and genotype (accession) by trait interactions were observed. The genotype x trait bi-plots consistently indicated that seed yield had positive associations with most of the traits; especially peduncles per plant, seeds per plant, terminal leaflet length and terminal leaflet width.