**4. Nutritional aspects of cowpea**

The seeds from cowpea seeds have high content of proteins, carbohydrates, low cholesterol, minerals and vitamins. The leaves of cowpea also have high proteins. The calorie values are higher in cowpea when compare to other crops. The nutrient value will be more and easily cultivable even in polluted or low mineral soils, so many countries consider it is important chief food source.

The homo-polysaccharide starch is present in all crops but in cowpea has to do delay in digestion than other crop starch, so it is good for all animals as well as

**Figure 5.** *Nutrient content of cow pea seeds (g/100 g).*


**Figure 6.** *Vitamin constituent of cow pea seeds (g/100 g).*

people consumption. The cowpeas seed have high content of vitamin B9 and helps in reduce or remove inborn error metabolism by means of efficiently develop neural tube in babies like fetus.

Vigna unguiculata *(L.) Walp: A Strategic Crop for Nutritional Security, Well Being... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.103025*

The cowpea cultivated by very poor people so it is called poor man crop and easy to grow under high drought conditions. These beans have phyticacids and some metabolic inhibitors which decrease the nutritional value. Some physiological methods like soaking, autoclaving fermentation, seed germination and stage of debranning used for the anti-nutritional properties of the cowpea by to is increased the cowpea nutrient bioavailability in soil.

Although the researchers has been identified importance of nutrients in many crop varieties. The anti-nutritional factors are high in dried seeds in some corps including cowpea than young or old leaves and pods. The below the images (**Figure 5**) describes the nutrient values, (**Figure 6**) describes the vitamin constituents and (**Figure 7**) describes the mineral quantity present in gram/100 gram of dried seeds or leaves.
