Saskatchewan Pulse Growers are holding a Premiere Pulse Virtual Series event with weekly sessions to help get key information out to producers.
The event runs Tuesday mornings and this week focused on Peas.
Dr Tom Warkentin is a breeder with the Crop Development Centre and talked about some of the work he's doing.
He says based on Saskatchewan Crop Insurance data for Yellow pea varieties CDC Meadow is still the most widely grown pea variety, and it has been for the last five or six years.
"Then there's several others that are growing on moderate amounts Amarillo, Inca, Spectrum, Carver, Ardill, Golden, Saffron, Chrome, Abarth. When I look at the stats from the last couple of years, these four varieties (Inca, Spectrum, Carver and Chrome) seem to be on the up swing in terms of popularity while the others are steady or declining."
He notes CDC Spectrum is now available at the certified seed level and has good yield, good for lodging and resistance to breakage and a little extra protein than compared to the check.
When it comes to acreage the majority of pea acres tend to be in yellow peas, with a premium usually offered for green peas.
Warkentin says producers can expect to see a new green pea variety soon.
"One new green pea variety that we plan to release in a year from now. Similar yield to Forest, so good yield. One kind of interesting feature, its one of the best ones we've seen in our trials over the last couple of years for lodging. So it stands up very well, so easy to harvest."
He says based on Saskatchewan crop insurance data the top Green pea varieties in 2020 were reported as CDC Raezer, CDC Limerick, CDC Spruce and CDC Forest
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