Growing Pulse Crops Pulse Crops Working Group

Dr. Tom Warkentin is a professor at the University of Saskatchewan where he is part of a team at the Crop Development Center. He has been a pulse crop breeder for about 30 years, mostly focused on field peas. Warkentin discusses the progress of his pulse crop breeding program over the decades, including varieties that have had a big impact on the industry. He also shares how he balances the need to improve genetics on multiple fronts all at once, like yield, quality, lodging, disease resistance, protein and a number of other factors. He’ll also cover what’s in the pipeline currently for new varieties and what questions and areas of research are still left unanswered. 
“Definitely yield is first and we keep pushing to improve yield. I think if we go through the records we’ve probably boosted yield 1 to 2% per year if you take the long-term average over a couple of decades. Second trait that farmers definitely like is lodging resistance, so the ability to stay upright. That has remained as probably the second most important trait in pea varieties over the last 30 years.”  - Dr. Tom Warkentin
Other priorities they focus on include protein quality and quantity, root rot resistance and ascochyta resistance. Dr. Warkentin discusses where these priorities come from including producer requests, processor preferences and consumer demands. Employing different techniques to highlight different characteristics is a lengthy difficult process in plant genetics that Dr. Warkentin’s team have been fine-tuning for years.
“So a combination of conventional breeding and marker assisted breeding and screening material with the actual pathogens, either indoors or outdoors.  All of those approaches we're using.” - Dr. Tom Warkentin
This Week on Growing Pulse Crops:
Meet Dr. Tom Warkentin, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan where he is part of a team at the Crop Development Center.Discover the priorities of genetic traits that his breeding program is addressing in peas and the impact this development is having on the pulse crop industryExplore the process the plant breeding team is employing to improve pulse crop geneticsLearn more about Dr. Warkentin’s work at the University of Saskatchewan by visiting his research webpage 

Growing Pulse Crops is produced by Dr. Audrey Kalil and hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast. 

Zack Bateson is the Research Manager at the National Ag Genotyping Center based in Fargo, North Dakota. You heard a little bit about the work the National Genotyping Center is doing in episode five with Dr. Brian Jenks.  In this episode we dive deeper into the services they offer to provide DNA testing for farmers and agronomists. Bateson got his start in DNA-based testing working in wildlife biology with prairie chickens and lizards, but says all of the skills can be applied to any organisms including variety detection, herbicide resistance, and soil pathogens, which is where he focuses today. 
“Growers can send us kochia and we can genotype them for the resistance to group 14. Then they're able to have a discussion with either their agronomists or other consultants to see whether it can be another actionable spraying opportunity or if there's something else that they can do about these resistant weeds.” - Zach Bateson
The National Ag Genotyping Center is a private nonprofit diagnostic lab that provides genetic testing to identify pathogens, pests and genetic traits such as resistance to herbicides. This valuable information can help growers determine next steps in treatment of fields without having to rely solely on potentially costly trial and error practices. Alongside these established practices they are also developing identification testing for different causes of root rot.
“The work involved is simpler for a person to do, especially with robotics, we can not only do tens of samples per day, but we can extract from hundreds of samples per day. We can test for multiple genetic markers throughout the day, so we're talking hundreds and almost thousands of data points that can be processed and reported out.” - Zach Bateson
This Week on Growing Pulse Crops:
Meet Zack Bateson, the Research Manager at the National Ag Genotyping Center based in Fargo, North DakotaExplore the work done at the National Ag Genotyping Center and the value they provide growers in North Dakota. Discover the support and research being developed at the National Ag Genotyping Center and the future projects they expect to participate in


Growing Pulse Crops is produced by Dr. Audrey Kalil and hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast. 

Dr. Brian Jenks is a weed scientist at North Dakota State University based in Minot. He has been in this role since 1997 and over that time he has seen an alarming rise in resistance to many of our herbicides from certain weeds, especially in kochia. In this episode Jenks discusses the resistance problem and some of the work underway to help farmers manage these weeds that are getting tougher every year to control. He also shares an exciting new offering from the Ag Genotyping Center to identify resistance.
“I've been polling farmers this winter and the most common answer I get is about 80%. Farmers think about 80% of their kochia is roundup resistant. So it's a majority of the kochia and we know that there's group 14 resistance out there to Aim and Sharpen. So if we want to control kochia in a burn down, we need to know  if Aim and Sharpen are going to work for us.” - Dr. Brian Jenks
Spray droplet size, travel speed when spraying and the height of the kochia when treated are all factors that greatly affect the success of herbicide use. True resistance however will be able to survive each of these adjustments. Developing new mechanisms of action and products to circumvent the resistance is a lengthy difficult process with no clear immediate solution in site. With resistance observed in many commonly used herbicides, gramoxone seems to be the only one that remains consistently effective. Unfortunately resistance is likely to emerge here too without other measures being taken.
“The worst thing we can do is probably a two year rotation where we're using the same herbicides and the same crops over and over.  I'm optimistic if we can diversify our crops to get a minimum of 3, 4, 5 crops in the rotation,  and then use 5, 6, 7 different modes of action with our herbicides.” - Dr. Brian Jenks
This Week on Growing Pulse Crops:
Meet Dr. Brian Jenks, a weed scientist at North Dakota State UniversityExplore the growing problem of herbicide resistant kochia and the impact this problem will have on pulse crop productionUnderstand the significance of different spray techniques and following up on spray treatments with early season monitoring
Growing Pulse Crops is produced by Dr. Audrey Kalil and hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast. 

Dr. Chris Graham is an associate professor at South Dakota State University. He’s also the manager of the West River Research Farm near Sturgis, South Dakota. At that facility they focus a lot on regenerative agriculture, including doing a lot of work with peas and other pulses to extend crop rotations in that semi-arid region in the western part of the state. Graham shares about pulse production in South Dakota, focusing mostly on field peas. He also shares some of the complexities of nitrogen fixation, including what it might look like to have farm-specific microbial inoculant mixes in the future. 
“When you look at the growth of wheat, generally the yield is set first and then the protein is made later in its life cycle. And so we often see peas, obviously they're harvested and they start to decay, and that slow decay releases nitrogen  later in the wheat growing season. And so we often see a protein bump with wheat following peas.” - Dr. Chris Graham
While there isn’t a lot of acreage in pulses in South Dakota yet, Graham calls field peas the “nickel slots” of the pulses. In other words, a great place to start incorporating them into a rotation with a low barrier to entry. He highlights that your soil nitrogen content will likely not increase but your input needs may decrease when pulses are used.
“It's still nitrogen that you didn't have to apply and it's also nitrogen that the plant did not necessarily take up from the soil. And so it's conserving some of that nitrogen that's being made available just on that baseline level.  ” - Dr. Chris Graham
This Week on Growing Pulse Crops:
Meet Dr. Chris Graham, an associate professor at South Dakota State University and the manager of the West River Research Farm near Sturgis, South DakotaExplore the potential use of pulse crops in rotations in South DakotaDiscover the niche pulses can fill in rotation as a broadleaf crop capable of nitrogen fixation
Visit Dr. Graham’s webpage here.
Growing Pulse Crops is produced by Dr. Audrey Kalil and hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast.

Dr. Breanne Tidemann is a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada based in Lacombe, Alberta. As a weed scientist, her job is to explore new and novel ways to manage weeds. Her focus is to research applied management strategies, weed biology and ecology, and screening for herbicide resistance. In this episode, Tidemann discusses the work she has been leading in Canada on the effectiveness of weed seed destruction technology including the use of mills and shares that this approach can be a very helpful tool in the toolbox especially in pulses.
“By and large, on the vast majority of weed species that have been tested in Canada and the United States, we're seeing greater than 95% control of what goes into those mills…There's the odd one here or there that's a little bit lower, but when I say it's a little bit lower, we're typically still talking greater than 80% control.” - Dr. Breanne Tidemann
Tideman shares the concern that at the end of the season the remaining weeds have managed to survive everything the farmer has put them through. They are therefore the fittest weeds that are the most difficult to get rid of. She proposes that rather than spreading those weed seeds all over the field with a combine we need to focus on destroying them. This process may not solve any weed problems for the crop you're harvesting, but it does start the weed management for the next year early and can have real impacts on future production. 
“So there's six main methods of harvest weed seed control. Some of them are things we would consider using in North America, like the weed seed destruction technology.…it's basically trying to turn the combine from a weed seed spreader into a weed seed predator” - Dr. Breanne Tidemann
This Week on Growing Pulse Crops:
Meet Dr. Breanne Tidemann a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada based in Lacombe, AlbertaExplore the value and purpose of research regarding harvest weed seed control especially as it relates to crops with limited herbicide options such as pulse cropsDiscover current methods and equipment that are effective for harvest weed seed control and are available in North America

Connect with Dr. Tidemann on Twitter @breannetidemann or visit her website here.
Growing Pulse Crops is produced by Dr. Audrey Kalil and hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast. 

Farmer and Northern Pulse Growers Association president Sam Arnson and executive director Shannon Berndt join us to talk about their work at NPGA, the importance of bringing the industry together to fund research, marketing and education efforts, and how other pulse growers can get involved. They share what NPGA has accomplished and what the future holds for northern pulse growers in the region.
“This is an exciting time to be part of this industry because we are still a fairly small industry, but we're growing. We're seeing a lot of additional states coming on board with acreage and production that face some of the same challenges that North Dakota and Montana producers face. And so as a collective group of growers, I think it's important that y'all have a voice.” - Shannon Berndt

The Northern Pulse Growers Association is a nonprofit association representing dry pea, lentil, chickpea, lupin and fava bean growers from Montana and North Dakota. Shannon Berndt has been serving as the assocation's executive director since 2007. When not acting as president for NPGA Sam is found farming northwest of Williston, North Dakota.

“People are overall excited next year for pulses to be put into their rotation if their rotation allows it. And I mean by that is their crop rotation and or chemical herbicide usage if it's opened for pulses. I think a lot of acres are gonna go in next year.” - Sam Arnson

This Week on Growing Pulse Crops:
Meet farmer and Northern Pulse Growers Association president Sam Arnson and executive director Shannon BerndtExplore the progress in development and collaboration between producers the organization has accomplished for pulse growers in the northern regionDiscover what future opportunities the NPGA feels pulse growers have available to them as the industry grows and expands


Growing Pulse Crops is produced by Dr. Audrey Kalil and hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast.