SWIFT CURRENT, Sask. – Chickpeas do best on stubble that produced high yields the previous year, says an Agriculture Canada researcher.
That’s because the previous crop would have used up most of the nitrogen in the soil. Available nitrogen will delay chickpea maturity.
Yantai Gan offered producers attending a workshop in Swift Current a choice of fields on which to plant chickpeas – summerfallow, chem fallow, durum stubble or barley stubble.
“My choice would be barley stubble,” he said. “Normally barley will have higher yields than durum.”
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As well, he offered a choice of stubble that yielded 20, 30, 50 or 60 bushels per acre of barley.
“I would prefer you put your chickpeas on this field,” he said, pointing to the 60 bu. field. “We know the nitrogen in the soil was gone.”
Another way to calculate a suitable site is to look at residual nitrogen. If the choices are 15, 30, 45 or 60 pounds per acre, Gan advises to choose the one with the lowest number.
Producers are then encouraged to apply readily available nitrogen at a high rate so the crop can use it immediately.
Otherwise, chickpeas can continue to fix nitrogen and delay maturity, leading to increased frost risk.
Gan added that the earliest maturing chickpeas in 2006 trials were those that had no applications of nitrogen or inoculant. Well-inoculated chickpeas may also continue to fix nitrogen and not mature fast enough.
He also presented the results of two years of research into paired-row seeding of chickpeas, in which two rows of plants are seeded close together with a large space between the next two rows. This makes it easier, with some sprayer modifications, to get at the crop canopy and apply fungicide.
Compared to conventional nine to 12-inch row spacing, Gan has found that disease rates are down and yields are up for the paired rows at several different application rates of fungicide and several seeding rates.
