Chickpeas are notorious for not maturing in Western Canada’s restricted growing season.
Yantai Gan, researcher with Agriculture Canada in Swift Current, Sask., has been working on shortening the chickpea maturation period to help farmers get crops in the bin dry and with fewer green seeds.
Field experiments were conducted at Swift Current and Shaunavon, Sask., in 2004 and 2005 to develop practices that promote chickpea maturity.
The results from four site years were consistent: nitrogen fertilizer improved chickpea maturity significantly compared to crops that received non-inoculant and non-fertilizer nitrogen or only rhizobial inoculant.
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Cultivars with later maturity responded to the fertilizer more significantly than the earlier maturing cultivars. Chickpeas grown on barley stubble matured earlier than those on wheat stubble.
Chickpeas grown on conventional summer fallow either did not mature due to a killing frost in 2004 or experienced delayed maturity in 2005 compared to those grown on wheat or barley stubble.
The experiment will be repeated in 2006 at both sites and the results will be summarized in a final report.
The 2005 growing season was near long-term normal with harvest being approximately one month earlier than 2004. Plants matured normally in 2005, producing good quality seed.
Differences among treatments were smaller in 2005 than in 2004, but the trends were similar between the two years.
Plants matured earliest on barley stubble and latest on fallow.
Fertility and inoculant treatments in 2005 significantly affected the maturity of chickpeas, although differences were smaller than in 2004.
Plots in Shaunavon showed larger differences than plots at Swift Current in 2005.
The non-nitrogen, non-inoculant check treatment and the inoculant-only treatment at Shaunavon were significantly later maturing in 2005. The same results happened at both sites in 2004.
The inoculant-only treatment was the latest or second latest to mature over both years at both sites when averaged over three tillage systems.
The magnitude of the effect of fertility and inoculants on chickpea maturity varied between varieties. The fertility effect on maturity was greatest on CDC Frontier and CDC Anna and smallest on CDC Xena.
On average, use of 50 or 75 pounds per acre of nitrogen without inoculant improved maturity by seven days for CDC Xena, 12 days for Amit (B-90), 13 days for CDC Frontier and 15 days for CDC Anna.
In 2004, seed yield increased with increased nitrogen rates from 0 to 45 kilograms per acre. Plots that received inoculant only produced similar seed yields as plots that received 34 kg of nitrogen per acre, but the former produced the highest proportion of green seeds – 52 percent – due to delayed maturity.
In 2005, there were fewer differences between treatments at Shaunavon and Swift Current, although Shaunavon yields were similar to 2004 while yields at Swift Current were significantly less.
