SASKATOON (Staff) – Growing peas the year before a wheat crop can increase wheat yields by 20 percent, a graduate student in soil science told farmers during a discussion held as part of Crop Production Week.
Craig Stevenson told the crowd that research shows a 15-bushel increase in wheat grown on peas compared to wheat grown on wheat.
“It’s quite a sizeable benefit,” said Stevenson of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.
In the second year of the study near Birch Hills, Sask., about 100 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon, the wheat crop grown on pea stubble yielded 37 bushels per acre. The wheat crop grown on wheat stubble yielded 22 bushels per acre.
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Only a small percentage of the increase in yield can be attributed to nitrogen-fixing properties of peas, said Stevenson.
Much of the increase was because of non-nitrogen benefits. There was a reduction of weeds in the pea-wheat plot and an increase in available phosphorus, potassium and sulphur. The soil structure was also improved and there were fewer root diseases.
In the wheat-wheat plot there was a 75 percent increase in common root ring and a 50 percent increase in leaf disease severity, he said.
Some of the increased production may be attributed to the quick breakdown in pea stubble. In the two 2.5-acre plots, a tandem disk was used in the fall. Stevenson said the pea stubble broke down more quickly than the wheat stubble. The blackened soil may have attracted more sunlight to its surface, warming the soil earlier in the spring.
