As the mungbean harvest wraps up across northern NSW it’s been a mixed result for growers.
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Pulse Australia northern region industry development agronomist Paul McIntosh said the weather had played havoc with mungbean crops in both NSW and Queensland for the past couple of seasons.
“We estimate about 75,000ha of mungbeans were planted for 2017/18 season and this includes newer areas like the Burdekin,” he said.
Extremely dry conditions produced a reduced planting area of mungbeans in northern NSW.
“Early planted spring crops once again have not performed as well as those that went in the traditional summer period,” Mr McIntosh said, with many later crops snagging a bit more rain towards the end of the growing period.
“It’s been extremely hot and dry as usual and generally the mungbeans have stood up to that surprisingly well.
“They certainly have proved again, that despite a hot and dry late summer period, our mungbean crops held on and have recovered very well, post the big rain events that occurred, with yields from 1.0 tonne per to 2.0 tonne per hectare in our northern region.
“South of the border for this last summer, it’s pretty bloody ordinary, with yields around 0.5t to 1t per hectare in many instances,” he said.
“Of course with mungbeans, it is not just yield that provides dollar returns for farmers, it is also bean quality.
“It’s pleasing to say that the quality has been fair to good this year and will reinforce our clean and green Australian mungbean image, no harm at all.”
Insect issues weren’t excessive throughout the season, and Mr McIntosh described the insect pressure this year “as nothing out of the ordinary”.
As summer harvest wraps up and growers look ahead for winter plantings, if sub-soil moisture levels allows, Mr McIntosh said the high Indian tariffs on chickpeas could deter some farmers from planting.
“Some people may be deterred, but many will still go on with their planned crop rotations and thankfully it will bring some agronomic sense to situations where people have been planting chickpea on chickpea in the last few years,” Mr McIntosh said.
Forward planning and crop rotations were key tools in managing diseases like phytophthora root rot and ascochyta in chickpeas.
Agronomic advisers caution against growing chickpeas on or near last year’s chickpea stubble.