Black-Eyed Pea in the High Plains

Abstract

Black-eyed pea is a pulse crop and a subspecies of cowpea. Historically, most of the black-eyed pea grown for grain has been in California. As water availability declined in the region, production shifted to Texas in the 1990s and to Arizona in the early 2000s. The pulse-crop-producing regions of Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado have seen an increase in black-eyed pea acreage over the past nine years as an effort to maintain U.S. production levels. Black-eyed pea is a suitable cash crop legume to enhance the dryland cropping rotations. What once was a crop grown on irrigated acres in the arid West has been found to flourish on the dryland and limited-irrigation acres of the High Plains. Earn 0.5 CEUs in Crop Management by reading this article and taking the quiz at https://web.sciencesocieties.org/Learning-Center/Courses.