Barley is generally considered competitive as a crop but not all varieties are equal.
Crop competitiveness can be broken into two categories: the ability to compete and the ability to withstand competition, said Paul Watson of the Alberta Research Council.
The agronomist and weed scientist from Vegreville, Alta., said unlike wheat varieties, the competitiveness of barley is highly variable and should be considered when making choices about production or breeding.
Crop competitiveness is important to integrated weed management. It can form the basis for other decisions about herbicides, rotations or reducing operational costs.
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Watson has analyzed the competitiveness of 29 popular barley cultivars from trials done in 2001 and 2002.
“We’ve looked at two and six row malting and feed classes, hulless, semi-dwarf, hulled and full height crops. There are a lot of barleys grown in Western Canada,” he said.
“If we can rank competitiveness we can give extension workers some real tools to advise producers. Producers will have a new set of criteria on which to base seed choices.”
Watson said choosing the right barley could deliver dividends to producers through reduced yield losses.
The research trials seeded the crops so they would have significant weed pressure, enough to create an expected 25 percent yield loss due to weed competition.
Results showed that under those conditions the most competitive barley cultivar had yield reductions of only six percent, while the least would lose 79 percent of its yield to weeds.
“It pays to make that right choice,” said Watson.
“Choices based on this criteria have the potential to save producers $20 million annually if just 10 percent of them use it and it is 10 percent effective.”
Watson found that as a class of barley, hulless and semi-dwarf varieties were less competitive than their full height, hulled cousins. But within these classes there was a great deal of variability.
“And it really helps organic producers or people that are growing crops under contracts that restrict pesticide use. They can’t avoid weed pressure and this could help them make choices about their seed options,” he said.
Of the top performing varieties that withstood competition and suppressed weeds, the best were some of the six-row class including the feed varieties Virden, Lacombe, Ranger and the six row malt varieties Robust, B1602 and Excel.
Virden significantly outperformed other varieties in the two years of trials.
The two rows Metcalfe, Dolly and Stratus performed as expected with about 25 percent yield loss due to weed competition.
Harrington, Manley and Stein were moderately competitive, with a competition ability rating of about 65 percent, or a 35 percent yield loss, where 25 percent was expected.
The research ranked the varieties so that different conditions might result in varying levels of yield impairment.
Watson said additional research into the ability to compete has enough significance that he believes it should be included in the annual prairie seed guides.
The only way to get farmers to adopt the competitive ability as a standard would be to include it in the guides in the same manner as yield and disease rankings, he said.
