Preferences of consumers and their willingness to pay for cowpea variety traits: implications for breeding in Techiman Municipality, Ghana.

Cowpea is consumed in almost every home in Ghana and it provides the cheapest protein supplement to the urban and rural poor in Ghana. In order to design sustainable crop improvement programmes, consumers’ preferred traits of cowpea need to be integrated into the breeding objectives. This study sought to examine the Ghanaian consumers’ decision-making behaviour towards cowpea variety selection and the values they place on different traits of cowpea. The study was conducted in the Techiman Municipality of the Bono East Region of Ghana using a combination of purposive, random and accidental sampling methods in selecting the district, communities, and consumers. The target population was all cowpea consumers in the Municipality. Using a structured interview schedule with choice cards, face-to-face interviews and choice experiment were conducted to collect data from the target respondents. Finally, trait preferences were analyzed using the Mixed Logit (ML) model. The findings indicate that the consumers prefer cowpea with longer storage periods, white grain colour and larger grain size. It is therefore recommended that policy makers and plant breeders set breeding objectives to incorporate these traits of cowpea to spearhead the development and release of market- oriented varieties.