Winter beans offer a low growing cost compared to OSR and good cultural blackgrass control.
Crops will leave good levels of residual nitrogen for the following cereal crop. A wide sowing window offers opportunity to spread the workload.
Browse our Varieties Below
Vespa
High Yielding, Stiff Strawed Variety.
Treated Yield 111%
✚ Vespa is a consistently high yielding variety which sits at the top of the PGRO Descriptive list.
✚ It yields considerably more (17%) than its predecessor Tundra.
✚ It is of average maturity and has robust disease resistance.
✚ Vespa has good seed size, slightly larger than Tundra and has strong standing ability at harvest.
Vincent
New Variety.
Treated Yield 108%
✚ Vincent yields just 3% behind Vespa.
✚ Vincent has a good standing ability at harvest and has an average maturity score, alongside Vespa.
✚ It has the best resistance to downy mildew of all the varieties on the PGRO Descriptive List.
✚ It has a large seed size, which will suit export markets, along with a high protein content.
Tundra
Widely Grown, Established Variety.
Treated Yield 94%
✚ Tundra has been the most widely grown variety in recent years.
✚ Now superseded by other varieties in terms of yield but Tundra has proven consistency on farm with good all round agronomics.
✚ Tundra has average maturity, similar to Vespa.
✚ Seed size is good and has been suited to export markets.
For more information, speak to your Agrii agronomist or call your local seed contact here
The Benefits of Pulse Crops
✚ As a nitrogen fixing crop, winter beans are a good addition to the rotation.
✚ One of the lower risk break crops to grow and with excellent durability.
✚ A wide range of straightforward establishment methods can be used.
✚ Great soil structure improving capacity, leaving an excellent entry for wheat.
There are a range of varieties suited to most parts of the country.
Ideally, crops can be sown from mid-October through to December, or if sown in January or February then seed rates should be adjusted upwards to allow for less branching – taking into account the breeder’s latest safe sowing recommendations.
Establishment of crops is split equally between sowing on top and ploughing in, conventional plough and cultivate/min-till systems. If crops are sown to a sufficient depth (around at least 10 cm) to enable good root growth over the winter, then this increases drought tolerance later in the growing season – this is where winter beans will usually perform better than their spring counterparts when under environmental pressure.
Some varieties have reasonable resistance to Ascochyta but other diseases can become an issue such as chocolate spot, rust and in some years, downy mildew.
Seed treatments are not regularly used on winter beans, however Take Off ST is available to aid establishment and early growth via improved root development, particularly in difficult conditions.
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