Cover crops offer a lot on paper, but timing remains a major roadblock for Prairie farmers. Recent trials done through Manitoba’s Diversification Centres suggest there may be a workaround — at least for wheat.

Jessica Frey, an applied research technician with the Parkland Crop Diversification Foundation and a University of Manitoba masters student, led a multi-site project looking at cover-cropping legumes with spring wheat. The goal wasn’t to produce a lush forage stand, but simply to get legumes established early and growing alongside a cash crop without compromising yield.

Why it matters: Getting cover crops to fit better into the Prairie growing season could help farmers build soil without sacrificing productivity.

“We’re not going for massive gangbusters growth in that stage,” she told farmers during a field day at the Prairies East Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Diversification Centre at Arborg, Man. “We just want to see that the cover crop is there. That is the goal.”

Solving a Prairie problem

Frey pointed to a 2020 survey of 281 Prairie farmers that found 71 per cent reported benefits from cover cropping — from improved soil health and biodiversity to less erosion and a reduced need for fertilizers and pesticides. But getting them established remains the major challenge. In fact, that same study said the top two reasons farmers are reluctant to plant cover crops are the short shoulder season and limited moisture in the fall.

“We have a short growing season,” Frey said. “We’re sometimes working with 90 frost-free days. We can’t count on that fall window to get a cover crop in the ground after our first harvest.”

Seeding the cover crop at the same time as the wheat is meant to solve that. Instead of waiting for conditions that might never come, the legumes get heat and moisture during the one part of the season Prairie farmers can count on.

In Frey’s trials, she adjusted the seeding rates to give the legumes a fighting chance. The wheat was seeded toward the lower end of the recommended rate, while the cover crops were seeded at the higher end of the recommended rate to compensate for their deeper placement in the same row.

“That gives the cover crops access to early season heat and moisture,” she said.

The cover crop treatments included four legumes — alfalfa, red clover, sweet clover and white clover — plus a non-legume cover crop control. A wheat-only plot served as the main control for comparison. This allowed the research team to track both legume establishment and any agronomic impact on the wheat.

The research was conducted at four Manitoba diversification centre sites in 2023, and repeated in 2024 at two of them. In total, five site-years generated data on wheat and cover crop establishment.

Wheat: No penalty, even in drought

Across those site-years, including the dry 2023 season, wheat performance for all treatments matched the wheat-only control. Yield, protein and biomass remained unchanged.

“There was no impact on the wheat compared to just the wheat-only control,” Frey said. “Even in drought years, that impact on the wheat was not there.”

Cover crop establishment was variable, depending largely on moisture. Alfalfa tended to produce the strongest stands across sites. White clover thrived at most but not all locations. Some failures occurred in extremely dry plots and one herbicide misapplication.

Still, the legumes were consistently present, and that was a win.

“Once it’s there, you have options,” Frey said. “It acts as that nutrient bank. You’re injecting nitrogen into the system.”

Weed biomass data is still being processed, but Frey noted the cover crop appeared to help suppress weed pressure.

Canola: management issues and moisture limits

The second half of the study aimed to let the legumes overwinter, then manage the biomass in spring and seed canola into it.

The same cover crop treatments were carried into the canola phase, using Clearfield canola so the biomass could be terminated chemically in early spring before seeding. The goal was to control the legumes, then evaluate how canola would establish and perform in the residue.

Here, the system stumbled. Cold, wet conditions at some sites delayed canola emergence, leaving a narrow spray window. The cover crop got ahead.

Arborg was the only site to produce a canola harvest, but even there, it wasn’t great.

“I wouldn’t claim it was an amazing canola yield by any means,” Frey admitted.

She repeated the phase this year at Roblin using mowing and Liberty Link canola. That mechanical approach showed better early establishment, but data isn’t yet available.

Unlike the wheat phase, moisture appeared to be the limiting factor in canola, which speaks directly to one of the main reasons Prairie farmers hesitate to try cover crops in the first place: water competition with the cash crop.

Moisture was also front and centre in related work by Manitoba Agriculture cereals specialist Anne Kirk. She designed her winter wheat trial to closely follow Frey’s approach, and the two researchers stayed in contact as the projects progressed.

Kirk ran her trial at Arborg using the same legume treatments seeded with winter wheat, adding a spring broadcast treatment as well. The biggest contrast between the wheat and canola phases came down to soil moisture.

She explained that canola has small seeds and requires a moist, firm seedbed. Deep-rooted legumes took the limited moisture first, both in fall and again before spring seeding.

“The big story here would be moisture,” she told the field day crowd. “The canola was seeded, and it just sat in the ground for a very long time because the moisture was quite low,” Kirk said.

Overall, while the wheat phase offers a promising path forward, the canola side of the system still needs work.

Lessons for today

The wheat phase did exactly what Prairie farmers have long hoped for: it established cover crops without sacrificing yield or quality. That opens new possibilities for integrating legumes while managing risk.

“We can pull this off without taking a hit economically,” said Frey.

Still, no one should expect lush forage under the wheat canopy, nor rush to seed canola into living legume sod without a refined management plan.

“If your goal is an amazing forage field, then don’t do it my way,” Frey said, but added that it could be helpful for some mixed farms. “It might be just enough to give you that week or two in the spring that you need before turning them out onto your regular pasture.”

Next steps

Understanding how much nitrogen the legumes contribute to a following crop was one of the main goals of phase two. Frey collected plenty of nitrogen data, but the canola struggled to establish well enough for her to draw clear conclusions from it — at least for now.

“What I don’t have yet is the story behind it,” Frey said of her nitrogen data.

Both projects will continue refining biomass control and evaluating the right crop following wheat.

But on the wheat side, the message is already clear: cover-cropping legumes can work here.

“We have a really unpredictable spring and fall,” Frey said. “Seeding together gives that cover crop access to the moisture and to the heat when it’s actually there.”

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It may well be that on the Canadian Prairies it would be unusual to find any molybdenum-deficient cropland. That certainly would have been true, let’s say, 70 or so years ago, when cropland was tilled and nitrogen fertilizer levels were relatively low. Some 40-50 years ago, Prairie wheat yields were around 25 bushels per acre and canola around 20. Now, N fertilizer levels are more than double and wheat and canola yields are around 50 and 40 bushels annually respectively.

Molybdenum is needed to convert the nitrate taken up by all crop plants into protein via the Mo-enzyme (nitrite reductase). In addition, in legumes, another Mo-enzyme (nitrogenase) is needed by the root nodule bacteria for nitrogen (N) fixation. Only tiny quantities of molybdenum are needed — but there are cropland factors that can limit or prevent molybdenum uptake by crop plants. The result may be inhibited crop growth, reduced yields or delayed maturity.

Let’s have a look at factors which may limit molybdenum crop plant availability and depress crop yields.

Nature

Molybdenum may be naturally deficient in a given area. In the northern U.S. state of Idaho, it was found that large areas — up to a quarter of the land in that state — could be naturally deficient in molybdenum. In a few areas in the central part of the state, the molybdenum level was so high in forage and hay in pastureland that it interfered with copper levels in livestock and caused a disease called molybdenosis, resulting in severe copper deficiency in pasturing animals.

Acidity

In very acidic soils — that is, those below pH 5 or 5.5 — there will be areas where the pH may be as low as 4 or 4.5, levels at which molybdenum may be unavailable and seeded canola in particular will remain in a tight rosette stage and grow very slowly if at all. The pH on such land must be adjusted either with lime (limestone) or wood ash.

Non-disturbance

In minimum or zero till, the surface soil of your cropland may be undisturbed for 10-15 years or more. If the cropland soil is perhaps between a pH of 5-6, then over this time the surface soils — say, down to two to three inches — can become acidified. Acidification of this surface soil is due to the use of nitrogen fertilizers, which acidify soil, and to crop residue, which can become acidic. The result is that this surface soil, at one to three inches, could have a pH of 3.5-4.5. This acidity immobilizes the soil molybdenum. The seedlings may pick up the soil nitrates, but without the molybdenum, the nitrates cannot be converted to proteins, in the absence of the molybdenum-based nitrate reductase enzymes. When the seedling roots move deeper into the soil with the higher pH, they likely will pick up sufficient molybdenum. This seedling delay could make the growing season longer — and the seedlings have a longer exposure to crop-damaging flea beetles.

Higher-demand crops

Legumes have greater needs for molybdenum than non-legume crops, since Mo is essential for N fixation in the legume root nodules. It is possible that legumes such as dry beans grown under irrigation in neutral or even in high-pH soil may have a need for Mo fertilization, due to the fact that the Mo which is normally present at low levels in soil may be leached below the root zones. We did run across irrigated bean growers who felt they got improved yields when they added a few ounces of Mo to the planted bean crop in southern Alberta.

Sulphate a suspect

In a review of several textbooks on the role of molybdenum, and one text in particular — Soil Nutrient Bioavailability, second edition, by Stanley Barber — I came across some new information. It appears sulphate in the soil can depress molybdenum availability. They compete for the same absorption sites on the root. For example, adding gypsum (calcium sulphate) to alkaline soil significantly decreases the uptake of molybdenum from 2.33 parts per million (p.p.m.) to 1.26 p.p.m. in tomatoes.

This same sulphate depression of molybdenum uptake was echoed in Marschner’s text and single superphosphate was identified as the cause. Triple superphosphate did not contain sulphate and was not a problem. Since our Prairie canola crops are high users of sulphur, this information should be explored. We may be depressing potential Prairie crop yields due to high or frequent applications of sulphate nutrients — a good reason to perhaps add an ounce or two of molybdenum to each acre of cropland.

Marschner also states that molybdenum deficiency is widespread in legumes growing in acidic soils. Additionally in this text, it states that molybdenum deficiency in cropland has a stalling effect on pollen formation in corn (maize). It causes delayed tasseling and results in a large proportion of flowers that fail to open. Both the above problems are preventable with a couple of ounces of molybdenum an acre.

When I was on the faculty at the University of Guelph, little attention was paid to crop-essential micronutrients. The rutabaga growers in Ontario, growing around 15,000 acres, worth about $12 million annually, invariably added a few ounces of sodium molybdate fertilizer to the intended rutabaga cropland. They said it enhanced rutabaga growth and quality. I would also point out that cauliflower growers in Ontario, on more than a few occasions, would come across a problem called whiptail. Whiptail is a disorder in the cabbage family (canola included) whereby the leaf rib develops but the leaf does not fill out. Search up “whiptail of cauliflower” on the internet. It’s a sign of molybdenum deficiency.

Another temporary way to alleviate Mo deficiency on acidic no-till or minimum-till soil is to deep harrow or till thin surface soil layer, to bring up the higher-pH soil that exists below the one- to three-inch level.

Sulphate, in the form of gypsum or single superphosphate, can depress plant uptake of Mo. Soil tests are not the most reliable methods for detecting available soil levels of Mo. So, if your cropland is on the acidic side — below pH 5.5 — and you follow a zero-till or minimum-till strategy, you may consider appropriate levels of Mo seed treatment, Mo foliar applications or Mo added to your fertilizer inputs at only a couple of ounces per acre. It’s a very small cost indeed if you suspect a Mo deficiency problem on your cropland.

The post A compendium on molybdenum appeared first on Grainews.

Over that time, he’s found certain legumes can bring net benefits to pastures and forage stands — significant enough to outweigh the potential drawbacks.

Eleven years ago, he recalls now, “we started working with a new sainfoin variety, and also asked a number of producers grazing higher-legume pastures to work with (Alberta’s provincial) Agri-Profit$ program and keep their beef and pasture financial records.”

During that time Alberta provincial production economists Dale Kaliel, and later Anatoliy Oginskyy, had been analyzing Alberta cow-calf operations through Agri-Profit$. That analysis involved recording pasture productivity data as benchmarks.

“For three years Dale added these additional higher-legume grazing producers into the total data pool,” Lastiwka says, and the department worked with applied research and forage associations in seeding sainfoin-alfalfa mixtures in small plot trials.

“After three years of data collection from these plots and producer data from regular- and higher-legume mix pastures, we saw that most higher-legume grass pastures were significantly more productive and profitable than grass pastures,” Lastiwka says now.

Several local producers in those associations wanted in on the next step of the research, he says, leading to 12 sites of about 10 acres each in Alberta and one in B.C. with the Peace River Forage Association, seeded with a mixture of sainfoin, alfalfa and grasses.

To “feed the grazing system,” so to speak, it’s important to have a legume in a pasture, Lastiwka says. “It improves the animal/plant nutrient cycling, forage quality, animal performance and grazing stability later into the season.”

With that in mind, the specialists began to look at new sainfoin cultivars and those varieties’ ability to regrow, compared with alfalfa.

“Since sainfoin can set seed so easily, it has the ability to create a soil seed bank; there is opportunity for regeneration from seed,” he says. “If a producer lets the plants go to seed now and then, there’s less need to reseed a pasture. This can work with many legumes, though alfalfa is harder to do this with.”

In earlier studies tied to the Year Round Grazing project (2006), Lastiwka and colleagues had found the productivity of Alberta’s perennial pastures to be disappointing. “We decided that the next stage would be looking at improving pastures with legumes.”

‘Made sense’

That said, the practice of rotational managed grazing had already been picking up support and adoption since the early ’80s, starting with advice from Allan Savory’s Holistic Resource Management, Stan Parsons’ Ranching for Profit, and producer-driven forage associations.

Thus, in Alberta, “there was a strong following for rest and recovery,” Lastiwka says.

“My brother (Benny) and I in 1987 divided hayfields (containing a lot of alfalfa) and started grazing them. We saw a 99-pound increase in our calf weights due to the higher legume content of the forage and better management of the forage growth.”

In other words, “it made sense to include more legumes in pastures,” he says.

The sainfoin project, he says, came about because Gordon Hutton, an Alberta Agriculture forage and business specialist at the time, “came to me after he’d been given a directive to do a business project on forages, and wondered what we should focus on.”

Lastiwka said he thought the project should focus on sainfoin — “because we needed to showcase the Canadian forage breeding programs which were not well supported.”

READ MORE: Going beyond grass: The case for forage legumes

Those breeding programs had developed several improved and non-bloating cultivars of legumes, such as Oxley II and AC Veldt cicer milkvetch, AC Bruce birdsfoot trefoil and AAC Mountainview and AAC Glenview sainfoin.

“The biggest reason people don’t include legumes in pastures is fear of bloat. This is something we needed to overcome,” Lastiwka says. Thus, “we jumped on the bandwagon to study sainfoin in our higher-legume pastures project.”

For the project, dubbed ‘Retrofitting Existing Pastures with Canadian-Bred Non-Bloating Legumes,’ the last phase was sod seeding, he recalls.

“If someone asked about putting some alfalfa in there, I told them to go ahead — because management is a key part of whether bloat is a problem or not. If you have a mix of grasses and legumes — some non-bloating legumes along with the bloating legumes — the dilution effect, allowing for more maturity and good management, can prevent bloat,” he says.

Anyone participating in the project could pick what they wanted to plant, he adds. “We were pushing for sainfoin to be included, along with cicer milkvetch, birdsfoot trefoil et cetera, but bloat-potential legumes like red clover, alsike clover, purple or yellow-blossom alfalfa were also encouraged.”

The benefits of sainfoin will always be complicated, however, by its seed size — almost seven times larger than alfalfa seed — which makes it a difficult sell for producers to include in their pasture mixes.

“It has only about 30,000 seeds per pound versus 200,000 seeds per pound with alfalfa. When buying seed and wanting sainfoin to be a large part of a total mix, most producers balk at paying that much money,” Lastiwka says.

Crop producers have been well covered for financial loss, given recent high grain prices and the availability of good crop insurance — but cattle prices have not been high until lately.

As a result, “forage acres have more risk. The total acres of forage in Canada have dropped dramatically and beef cattle numbers are falling.”

Into that context — as well as an ongoing drought — the federal government set up the OFCAF (On-Farm Climate Action Fund), Lastiwka says.

OFCAF is meant to support farmers in adopting beneficial management practices that store carbon and reduce greenhouse gases — specifically in areas such as nitrogen management, cover cropping, rotational grazing and higher-legume forage stands — while providing other environmental benefits such as improved biodiversity and soil health.

Last year, along came the federal/provincial Resilient Agriculture Landscape Program, Lastiwka adds.

“Now producers have funding for adding more legumes to pastures — 51 per cent legumes in pastures. The struggle last year, however, was drought, but we are again slowly making progress,” he says.

‘Growing like crazy’

All this amounts to opportunity — namely, the opportunity to get a message across about the benefits of higher levels of legumes in a pasture mix.

“A challenge is still which legumes are best for your own land, grazing plans, and management situation, and cost of seed,” Lastiwka says. “Because of the large size of sainfoin seed, it continues to be used at low rates in legume mixtures and many people don’t try to purchase improved varieties.”

The seed industry puts the percentage of total seed weight of each component of a mix on a bag label. Thus, “if the label says 50 per cent sainfoin, because of large seed size, this translates in sainfoin to only about 20 per cent of a stand in the field,” he says.

“For the highest productivity in moderately dry to moister areas, we can graze pastures quickly in the spring or early summer, taking about a quarter to a third of it, because they are growing like crazy. Then we can come back again for a second or maybe even a third graze in moister climates, after it has had a chance to adequately regrow.

“At our farm, with my second grazing in September or later, most legumes have some seed set. I graze that second pass hard. The grazing activity of cattle, consuming and defecating viable seed, can spread legume seeds (or trample them into the soil) as another planting.”

Seeds of several legumes can also be fed to cattle by mixing the seed into their mineral. “This is a low-cost seeding method for adding legumes to grass pastures. I have used this mix and find that after the manure starts to break down, sainfoin and other legume seedlings emerge from the manure,” Lastiwka says.

Sainfoin can be included in a lot of stands, but many producers don’t yet know enough about it. “Some don’t want to gamble and take the risks, since it is expensive, but with support from these recent programs, I hope more people will be willing to try it, and manage for its success.”

‘Paid to plant’

Lastiwka still has sainfoin in his own older stand, though he acknowledges he didn’t plant the best variety. “I seeded our project a year before some of the newly selected sainfoin varieties were available.”

Given that the uptake of new varieties is based on projections of how much a company can sell, will enough people buy it to cover the cost of producing it?

“Trying to meet those needs, economically and competitively, makes a difference in how many new Canadian forage varieties are available for producers. Now should be a time we could utilize a lot of sainfoin, with the new government programs, because people will be paid to plant high-legume pastures as long as they are over 50 per cent legumes,” Lastiwka says.

Lastiwka’s own pasture, planted in 2011, still has 50 per cent legume — and different kinds, at that. “The low land is bird’s foot trefoil and alsike clover plus grasses. Much of the upper land is yellow-blossom alfalfa, cicer milkvetch and grasses. My less-suitable sainfoin variety is only present in small amounts.”

Sainfoin breeding by Dr. Hari Poudel at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Lethbridge remains ongoing, Lastiwka notes. Breeding of cicer milkvetch and alfalfas and grasses continues at the University of Saskatchewan, as does work with clovers and birdsfoot trefoil and hardier alfalfas in Nova Scotia and Quebec.

“Since there is still Canadian legume breeding going on, we need to keep making an effort to get newly released varieties into the right hands for producer use.”

The post Pastures, hayland get a leg up with legumes appeared first on Grainews.

They are also constantly working on getting these new varieties tested and into the hands of Saskatchewan growers as soon as they are ready.

And as a result of this work, there are currently several noteworthy varieties that are expected to be available to growers in coming years through the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers Variety Release Program. Here are a few names to watch out for.

Red lentils

CDC Impulse and CDC Proclaim, both released to Select Seed growers in 2014, are varieties that lentil growers should watch for, says Sherrilyn Phelps, Saskatchewan Pulse Growers’ agronomy and seed program manager.

CDC Proclaim is similar to the benchmark CDC Maxim, which is currently the most widely grown red lentil variety in Saskatchewan, while CDC Impulse is 10 per cent larger than CDC Maxim. Both CDC Proclaim and CDC Impulse have good disease resistance, early-to-medium maturity, and are Clearfield varieties.

Another one to watch for is CDC Redmoon, according to Phelps. Although it will not be available to growers for another couple years, having been released through the variety release program in 2015, this variety is also similar to CDC Maxim and early testing shows very high yields, although not a Clearfield variety.

CDC Roxy, an extra small red released in 2014, might also be of interest to lentil growers. Although it is not a Clearfield variety, it is plumper than most extra small reds and has good lodging tolerance.

Green lentils

A new French green lentil variety, CDC Marble, is also on the horizon. Released in 2013, it has a slightly lighter colour than other French greens but has improved lodging tolerance and a good disease package and yield, although also not a Clearfield variety.

CDC Kermit, a small green variety released in 2014, is noteworthy for its similarity to CDC Viceroy and CDC Imvincible, the two most widely-grown small green varieties in Saskatchewan last year. Although not a Clearfield variety, CDC Kermit has good yield potential and good lodging tolerance.

The most recent large green variety, CDC Greenstar, was released in 2013 and is attracting attention for being the largest seed size in its class and its high yield potential. It is also Clearfield variety and between CDC Greenland and CDC Plato for colour.

Peas

According to CDC Plant Breeder Tom Warkentin, a yellow pea to watch for is CDC Inca. First released in 2015, seed likely will not be available to growers for another couple years, but the new variety has a strong yield potential for southern Saskatchewan.

“Based on data available so far, it has a seven per cent yield advantage over CDC Amarillo in the south,” Warkentin says.

In terms of green peas, CDC Greenwater is the one to keep an eye on. First released in 2014, it is already showing strong potential for yield with a 21 per cent yield advantage over CDC Striker (currently the most widely grown green pea variety in Saskatchewan) in the south, and a 13 per cent yield advantage in the north.

Although not new, CDC Raezer and CDC Limerick are both up-and-coming varieties, gaining substantial acres in Saskatchewan. Released in 2011 and 2012, respectively, they both provide greater yield than CDC Striker.

Chickpeas

There will not be any new chickpea varieties released next year, but CDC Plant Breeder Bunyamin Tar’an and his team are busy preparing new varieties for potential release in 2018, all of which will be imidazolinone herbicide tolerant (IMI-tolerant).

Of the current varieties there are a few that are standing out, Tar’an says. The most popular ones are CDC Orion, released in 2010, and CDC Leader, released in 2011. The next most popular is CDC Palmer, which was released in 2014.

“All these new Kabuli chickpeas are well adapted to Saskatchewan conditions, and CDC Leader in particular is relatively early maturing compared to the other medium-large Kabulis,” Tar’an says.

Phelps adds that CDC Palmer has a lot of characteristics that appeal to growers.

“It has a large seed size and is similar to CDC Orion, which is what growers are tending to look for,” she says. CDC Palmer also has yield similar to Orion and a medium-to-late maturity, while Orion has a later maturity.

Fababeans

The most recent fababean variety released was CDC Snowdrop in 2012. This was the first small seeded, low-tannin fababean released from the CDC breeding program and has been growing in acreage in Saskatchewan in the last couple of years.

For more information on all CDC developed varieties, visit the Growing section of saskpulse.com.

This article originally ran in the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers’ magazine “PulsePoint.” You can find back issues of PulsePoint online at saskpulse.com.

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“The lentil genome assembly will provide important information to help us better understand this crop,” said Kirstin Bett, U of S professor in the Department of Plant Sciences and project lead of the international lentil sequencing effort in a January press release. “More importantly, it will lead to development of genomic tools that will help improve breeding practices and accelerate varietal development.”

Dr. Bert Vandenberg of the Crop Development Centre (CDC) is another of the researchers involved in the genome project. He is the only lentil breeder in Canada, and one of only three in North America, working on extensive lentil breeding research. “In lentils we are operating on many fronts,” he says. “Our central theme of course is the ability to improve both yield and understanding the genetic basis of quality traits, agronomic traits and disease resistance.”

There are emerging issues, such as a rise in the incidence of root rot, and Vandenberg’s team is working to develop better resistance to this and other diseases in new varieties. “As acres expand our workload is expanding as well,” says Vandenberg. “We are seeing resistant weeds, so we need new herbicide tolerance. We are going to see five million acres of lentils this year, so that’s going to create new problems if people are growing lentils in places where they never thought they would,” he says.

Canada is the world’s largest exporter of lentils, and Saskatchewan produces 95 per cent of the Canadian crop. Statistics Canada reports that Canadian lentil exports from August to November last year totalled a record 1.36 Mt, 65 per cent more than the amount exported during the same period in 2014. Export demand is expected to remain strong in 2016 and seeded acres could top five million in Saskatchewan alone this year.

Prices for lentils have been strong over the past few years, with huge growth in export markets such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as a result of increasing demand and crop shortfalls in these countries due to drought.

Prairie moneymakers

“Lentils are very profitable for growers at the moment,” says Sherrilyn Phelps, agronomy and seed program manager, Saskatchewan Pulse Growers Association (SPGA). “That’s why there’s an interest in lentil research. It’s a relatively new crop on the Prairies, and there are still things that we’re trying to figure out, and issues we’ve come across that we haven’t looked at in the past. We are working on taking lentils to the next level and sustain production here in the province.” SPGA has provided more than $2.4 million in funding towards lentil genomic research.

Vandenberg says that lentil consumption is rapidly increasing — at a rate five times higher than human population growth — partly driven by the fact that lentils are one of only a few pulses that cook quickly. “We’re going to see continued rising consumption, so we are engaging in doing what we need to do to have a stronger industry in Canada,” says Vandenberg. “We are looking at a business development model to expand the role that Canada can play in the milling and de-hulling industry. Then if we are going to be de-hulling how do we add value to the other pieces of the seed that will be left behind.”

Vandenberg says that there is a lot of scope for further research to improve the agronomics, quality and disease resistance in lentils. “A lot more can be done with continuing, strategic investments to make the industry stronger,” he says. “Lentil is a small crop with not a large research community. There is definitely scope to expand that.”

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The first department head of the newly constituted Soil Science Department, University of Saskatchewan (1919) was Roy Hanson, a soil microbiologist. His first observation was “we need to grow legume crops to arrest the sharp drop in soil nitrogen that has happened with just a few years of cultivation.”

Legume crops at that time were perennial — alfalfa, clovers, etc. Perennial legumes in rotation and green manure crops were a mainstay of soil conservation in Europe, the U.K. and eastern North America. But, they failed miserably in the northern Great Plains in the U.S. and the Palliser Triangle in Western Canada. Alfalfa is a big “suck” for water and lowers the water table over time. The first crops after a perennial forage of any kind were a bust unless a super wet year came along.

Fast forward to the 1970s. The newly formed Crop Development Centre at the University of Saskatchewan had a mandate to develop new crops to reduce reliance on wheat. This was especially true in the brown and dark brown soil zones where canola was not suited. At that time canola (then called rapeseed) was considered to be a black soil zone crop.

The young Crop Development Centre was able to recruit Dr. Al Slinkard, a pulse crop breeder, to Saskatchewan from the U.S. Pacific Northwest of the. Al quickly established lentil as a viable crop for the drier regions. Lentil was especially adapted to the clay belt of west central Saskatchewan and the Regina plains. The crop not only survived in the drier years, but thrived. Level land with no stones was ideal for a short crop like lentils. In the R.M. of Milden No. 286, where this old scribe was raised, much of the net worth of many farmers today is a result of lentil over the past 30 years or so.

It was our great fortune in the 1970s to work with Al on the water and nutrient requirements of many crops, including lentil, pea and fababean. The work showed that lentil was not a great irrigation crop, but fababean was.

Saskatchewan has become the world leader in lentil export and pea is also an important crop. On my little farm, growing pea every four year has been an important part of the rotation since 2001.

But, the current wet spell and disease of both pea and lentil have required a rethink of crops. Many farmers I have talked to are ready to give up on pea as a crop because of disease. To include a new legume, many have opted for soybeans, and some quite successfully. But, there have been busts along the way also.

But, why do we want to compete head on with soybean growers in the U.S. (and the U.S. treasury) and huge acres in Brazil? A big push for soybean is the companies that want to sell us expensive seed. And, we do not need or even want another glyphosate-resistant crop.

Glyphosate is a major kingpin in our current zero-till, continuous-crop agriculture. Without glyphosate we must rethink our entire cropping system in much of Western Canada. And, the more glyphosate resistant crops we have the quicker resistant weeds will come along.

Fababean was grown in the 1970s in the irrigation area at Outlook and in the Norquay region of east central Saskatchewan — a wet area. At that time straight cut headers were not used so fababeans were swathed. They made a miserable swath and if it got wet it was bad news.

The crop all but disappeared but is making a comeback. Folks I have talked to that grew them this year have all straight cut the crop. Fababean is a longer season crop but it can be seeded early like peas.

For fababean to become an important crop the research priority is market development — particularly the attributes of the bean itself and uses for it. That is what made canola a “made in Canada” crop. The Americans were very slow to take up canola, leaving most of the market to us. Maybe we can do the same with fababean?

Our Crop Development Center, University of Saskatchewan, (Bert Vandenberg and colleagues) has an active fababean program. Let us cheer them on and make sure resources are in place to develop a crop that can complete the legume requirement for long-term rotation success.

The post Fababeans: our next Cinderella crop appeared first on Grainews.

Around the world, some countries are concerned about the lack of local available water for growing their own forage. “There is a growing trend for longer-term commitments when purchasing forages and alfalfa of perennial legume by other countries,” said Lastiwka. This can provide Canadian grain and oilseed producers with a more economically viable alternative crop.

Growers can also seed their stand into a perennial legume, have custom representatives come in and harvest it, and get a better price per acre and per tonne for forage legume. “This is happening and it’s a trend we feel is on the rise,” said Lastiwka.

Perennial legumes

A perennial legume provides an opportunity to bring a very different type of plant into a crop rotation system. This can break disease cycles of existing cereal and oilseed crops. It may also address some herbicide resistance issues and cut fertility costs, as alfalfa can fix its own nitrogen.

On the negative side, annual crop diseases seem to be on the rise. “We worry about general diseases that can occur with a short rotation that survive through the two years between oilseed crops — like fusarium, aster yellows, skull, net blotch, black leg, club root and even insect issues,” said Lastiwka.

“When we look at breaking that rotation with a perennial legume, we make an inhospitable environment for those diseases and insect issues.”

Work done by Neil Harker at Lacombe showed the opportunity of breaking some wild oat herbicide resistance issues by looking at a number of alternatives, such as a perennial crop like alfalfa.

• More Grainews: Alfalfa seed production

“When that was looked at with wild oats, excluding wild oats herbicides for three years, done at eight locations across Canada (from Alberta to Quebec), they found alfalfa as an alternative, along with a double seeding rate of winter cereals, allowed for cutting silage — providing effective wild oat management without wild oats herbicide,” said Lastiwka.

This system dramatically reduced selective pressure of wild oat resistance to herbicides and helped growers delay wild oats resistance evolution.

Lastiwka looked at existing fertility opportunities with a perennial legume. “Even with a very short rotation with perennial legumes, it’s surprising, within the two or three year crop production system, how much nitrogen can be harvested and made available to resulting crops on that land,” he said.

Nitrogen release

The University of Manitoba’s Dr. Martin Enns found with a no-till approach, the release of nitrogen is slower than when the alfalfa stand is cultivated under.

According to Enns’ study, the slow release of nitrogen with no-till can last up to seven years (with some based on nitrogen coming out of the roots). “He also felt some was due to the root channels,” said Lastiwka. “Also, the root system improved the productivity longer, potentially up to 10 years — doing well with this good highway in the soil to travel.”

Alfalfa can go as deep as 20 feet into the soil. The majority of the effect alfalfa would have on the soil would be below the cultivated line, but, in many situations, the soil is only cultivated about three feet deep.

“Work done by Bruce Coulman and Paul Jefferson in Saskatchewan show that our hay fields have been dropping over time, part of which they felt was due to very good prices for cereals and oilseeds resulting in many producers letting their stands get older with lessened quality,” said Lastiwka.

“We’re seeing a higher price paid for forages, in general, because of a market and lack of acres. But, having legume stands seeded doesn’t mean you have to harvest it yourself or that you won’t have opportunity to market it, as long as you’re doing it right.”

Lastiwka advised consulting with all parties involved in advance to determine what they are looking for, what they will pay for it, and even if they will harvest it for you.

“Productivity of alfalfa forage stands are related to their management and that is a very important factor,” said Lastiwka. “The more skilled the management, the more the potential.”

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