The chickpea devastation in Sask-atchewan last year shows the pulse’s voracious need for heat and its susceptibility to humidity.
But results in one small area of the province show that in normal conditions, producers in most parts of the brown and some parts of the dark brown soil zones can get a good crop.
While cool and wet conditions played havoc with most chickpea growers, crops near Frontier in southwestern Saskatchewan were excellent. Southland Processors reported 95 percent of local kabuli chickpeas graded number one, while growers of the Sanford and Dwelley varieties saw yields of 20 to 30 bushels per acre.
Read Also
Canada’s oat crop looks promising
The oat crop looks promising and that’s a good thing because demand is strong.
Saskatchewan Agriculture agrologist Garry Noble said the results at Frontier are good news for other Saskatchewan producers. The precipitation and growing degree days around Frontier were equivalent to long-term averages for the brown and dark brown soil zones.
The unusual wet and cool weather of 1999 in the brown and dark brown zones was terrible for chickpeas, Noble said. Growing degree days were 10 to 15 percent below normal, which is equivalent to losing 11 days in July. Precipitation was 30 to 116 percent above normal.
Ascochyta broke out in most crops when cool temperatures and high rainfall created a blanket of humidity. Most crops didn’t mature before killing frosts.
Noble said producers deciding whether to grow chickpeas should worry more about growing degree days than frost-free days.
For example, Estevan and North Battleford have almost the same number of frost-free days, but they have dramatically different growing degree days. Estevan normally gets almost 1,700, while North Battleford usually gets less than 1,500.
