Progress in 2010 Twenty-nine lines were selected as potential candidates for inclusion into an eight- parent MAGIC population, based primarily on their strong performance for grain yield under harsh environments. The country partners in Burkina Faso and Senegal conducted grain yield and agronomic character phenotyping of the two ‘top-off' MARS populations each consisting of 93 F4:5 lines. The data will be used to estimate breeding values for MARS and act as a preliminary exercise of how to conduct MARS. A ‘Find polymorphic cowpea markers’ tool was developed and applied in identifying the SNP sets. This tool is publicly available to the cowpea breeding community. Progress was made in implementing ICIS plant breeding management software and other modern breeding support tools at UC–R and IITA. Cowpea breeding histories from the long-term IITA breeding programme were entered into ICIS, as well as new pedigrees of crosses generated recently at UC–R.