This study aimed to investigate the effects of different precooling treatments（0 ℃ ice water, 4 ℃ cold water and 4 ℃ refrigerator） on the physiological characteristics of post-harvest cowpea. The results showed that precooling treatments could effectively maintain the sensory quality and slow the loss of nutrients of cowpea. Among the treatments, cold water precooling showed the best freshkeeping effect on post-harvest cowpea. It slowed the decline of sensory quality of post-harvest cowpea, inhibited the increase of weight loss rate, ethylene release amount, relative conductivity and malondialdehyde（MDA） content, and the degradation of total soluble solids（TSS）, vitamin C, chlorophyll and soluble protein, and improved the activities of catalase（CAT） and peroxidase（POD）.
