Cowpea is a major source of dietary protein in most African diets.  It suffers from a wide range of production constraints including viral diseases.  Cowpea aphid-borne mosaic potyvirus (CABMV) is the most important viral pathogen of cowpea in major cowpea growing regions of the world.  While breeding for resistance is an ongoing activity is various laboratories, the availability of resistant germplasm is limited.  Our strategy has been to use pathogen derived resistance to introduce viral genes into cowpea.  However, this effort has met with limited success due to the lack of an efficient, reliable and reproducible transformation and regeneration system. Our present goal is to attempt the transformation of cowpea seedlings using electrophoresis.  The coat protein gene of CABMV was cloned into the binary vector pBI 121 in various forms designed to confer coat protein-mediated resistance and sense- and antisense- RNA mediated resistances.  The DNA constructs were electrophoresed into the apical meristem of developing cowpea seedlings under various conditions including different voltage and current settings as well as pretreatment of seedlings with acid or plant growth regulators.  Preliminary screening was done using GUS assays, and the plants allowed to set seed.  The seed was harvested and will be replanted in-vitro on kanamycin.  Further analysis will be done using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and Southern blot hybridization to determine the most effective regimen.