design: Resistant cowpea unifoliate leaves were infested with 20 adult apterous aphids on a single unifoliate leaf and enclosed in a mesh sleeve bag.  Samples were collected at 6 days post-infestation. Each sample consisted of three unifoliate leaves pooled from three plants. Cowpea aphid removal was performed immersing the leaves in water and gently removing any remaining aphids with a fine-tip paintbrush. Leaves were immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at -80C until RNA extraction through NucleoSpin RNA Plant kit (Macherey-Nagel).