An Australian chickpea specialist doesn’t expect much of a crop from the country down under in the coming year because of disease pressure.
“We had so much ascochyta in 2003 that the inoculant will be everywhere,” said Kevin Moore, who works with the department of agriculture in the state of New South Wales.
“I wouldn’t be growing chickpeas in 2004.”
Producers were “throwing chemical” at the disease every two weeks in 2003. Regulations preventing Australian farmers from using fungicides, such as Headline and Quadris, compounded the problem.
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Moore told growers attending Pulse Days, held as part of Crop Production Week in Saskatoon Jan. 12-17, that Australia’s experience with chickpeas has been similar to Canada’s.
The first commercial varieties were planted in 1978. Acreage grew rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s, peaking at 741,600 acres in 1998, the same year that ascochyta blight disease was first identified in the Australian crop.
“In 1998 it bellowed its presence everywhere,” said Moore.
The incursion of the disease led to a steady decline in the popularity of the crop. Australians seeded 400,000 acres of chickpeas in 2003, nearly half the 1998 total. The size of the crop will likely shrink again in 2004.
Production has shifted from the southwest portion of the country to the northeast, where conditions for the disease are less favourable and where farmers have fewer winter crop alternatives.
While the disease has devastated the country’s chickpea industry, much like it has in Canada where plantings have plummeted from a 2001 high of 1.15 million acres to 148,000 acres in 2003, there’s still hope.
“There’s a fair bit we can do about it,” said Moore.
Researchers have discovered the primary source of infection is not diseased seed as once thought. It is residue from previously infected chickpea crops dispersed by wind or water.
He recommended growers take a three- to four-year break before planting chickpeas on the same field or that they seed no closer than 500 metres from fields that have recently grown the crop. However, he recognizes that is not always a practical solution.
“You try to stay isolated if you can but that’s a difficult thing to do because everybody has a neighbour.”
Other ways of managing the disease include seed treatments and fungicides. Moore said two years of trials have shown the type of seed treatment doesn’t matter; seed coverage is the critical issue. Using seed from ascochyta-infected fields is strongly discouraged.
Another key finding is that skipping the first spray of fungicide can be disastrous.
“You can’t allow the fungus to get established in the canopy. Once it’s in that’s it, you can’t get rid of it.”
Moore tells pulse growers in New South Wales to apply fungicide before the first post emergent rain or to do it two weeks or two branches after emergence. He said there is strong evidence that improved management skills are lifting average yields of the crop.
“Australia will therefore continue to be a major producer and supplier of chickpeas to world markets.”
The other good news is that new, ascochyta-resistant cultivars should soon be released. He pointed out that Canada is ahead of the game in finding a breeding solution to the ascochyta epidemic.
