MORDEN, Man. – Standing in front of immaculately straight rows of 87 types of field peas being tested at the scenic Morden Research Centre, breeder Tom Warkentin told pulse crop producers they can anticipate a lot of improvements.
Some of the cultivars that make it through the tests will eventually become varieties with higher yields, earlier dates for maturity and resistance to lodging.
But how close are pea growers to the Holy Grail of disease resistance?
“That would be nice, but realistically I don’t know that there’s great improvements in disease resistance in this batch,” Warkentin said.
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Farmers can choose three varieties of peas resistant to powdery mildew, Warkentin said, and more varieties could be only a few years away.
Fellow researcher Khalid Rashid told producers on a recent tour of the centre that next year’s pea breeding program will include genes resistant to sclerotinia stem rot.
But “we won’t see absolute resistance” to ascochyta blight, Warkentin said; only gradual improvements in the next three to 10 years.
“We can make small gains over time, just the way we make small gains in yield.”
In the meantime, researchers are looking for better chemical control of diseases. Rashid has been working with chemical companies for the past two years using fungicides registered for crops other than peas.
Preliminary results from a seed treatment test last year showed that “a combination of Thiram and Rovral was reasonably good in controlling the root rot and increasing yield,” Rashid said.
Last year, he tested nine chemicals and combinations, including Aliette, Crown and Captan, with varying degrees of success.
This year, he expanded the experiment to include 19 chemicals and combinations.
Rashid said he’s also working to find the best time and rate to apply Bravo as a foliar control for ascochyta blight. Bravo has shown reasonable results in past experiments.
Select chemicals tested
An important part of the centre’s strategy is to test only chemicals that companies would consider registering for peas.
“Some of the treatments we are doing may not materialize because they may not be effective,” Rashid said. “But at least when we have the companies on board in these collaborative studies, we are sure that anything that works out, the companies are 100 percent behind it for registration.
“To them, it’s money and business. To us, it’s doing research and helping farmers.”
