Chickpeas 101

Feb 02, 2022

Chickpeas are one crop that tends to see limited acreage across the Prairies.

The Saskatchewan Pulse Growers held their virtual Winter Pulse Meeting last week.

Consulting Agrologist Melanie Leppa from Soils and Such Agronomy Ltd did the Chickpea 101 presentation.

She says it is important producers that may be interested in seeding chickpeas for the first time understand the crop and what's involved.

"First of all, you have to love your sprayer, because you may spend a lot of time in it. And you're going to need access to a lot of water if you have to spend time in your sprayer because of disease issues in chickpeas. That is one of our biggest challenges. You are basically signing up to be a babysitting service if you grow chickpeas. So if you don't want to do it, you may need to find someone to help you along with it because they do require a lot of scouting. And you need some patience to be a good chickpea grower."

She notes the crop likes moisture and does better in flat or slightly rolling land with loamy soils as opposed to heavy clay.

Chickpeas don't do well in saline soils or waterlogged soils.

Leppa cautions producers about the disease issues and spray requirements, but notes they can be beneficial as well in a crop rotation:

"The one benefit of chickpeas in rotation is that they are an alternate crop choice for Aphanomyces infested fields. So might be a pulse that more people are starting to, to think about again. It's been a long time since a lot of growers have grown them, but they're coming back into the thought process. "

Another thing to be aware of with chickpeas is their days to maturity.

"They are an in determinant crop, so they will grow forever until they receive some form of stress to kind of turn the tides and ripen. So some years they will ripen in 110 days, but I've seen them take a lot longer than 130 days before."

She notes overall, if you're thinking about seeding chickpeas, it's important to start with good quality seed that hash low ascochyta levels.

You can find her full presentation "Chickpeas 101" including her growing checklist here.

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Video: US Soy: Pig growth is impaired by soybean meal displacement in the diet

Eric van Heugten, PhD, professor and swine extension specialist at North Carolina State University, recently spoke at the Iowa Swine Day Pre-Conference Symposium, titled Soybean Meal 360°: Expanding our horizons through discoveries and field-proven feeding strategies for improving pork production. The event was sponsored by Iowa State University and U.S. Soy.

Soybean meal offers pig producers a high-value proposition. It’s a high-quality protein source, providing essential and non-essential amino acids to the pig that are highly digestible and palatable. Studies now show that soybean meal provides higher net energy than current National Research Council (NRC) requirements. Plus, soybean meal offers health benefits such as isoflavones and antioxidants as well as benefits with respiratory diseases such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).

One of several ingredients that compete with the inclusion of soybean meal in pig diets is dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS).

“With DDGS, we typically see more variable responses because of the quality differences depending on which plant it comes from,” said Dr. van Heugten. “At very high levels, we often see a reduction in performance especially with feed intake which can have negative consequences on pig performance, especially in the summer months when feed intake is already low and gaining weight is at a premium to get them to market.”

Over the last few decades, the industry has also seen the increased inclusion of crystalline amino acids in pig diets.

“We started with lysine at about 3 lbs. per ton in the diet, and then we added methionine and threonine to go to 6 to 8 lbs. per ton,” he said. “Now we have tryptophan, isoleucine and valine and can go to 12 to 15 lbs. per ton. All of these, when price competitive, are formulated into the diet and are displacing soybean meal which also removes the potential health benefits that soybean meal provides.”