Evaluating dry edible beans as a double crop following winter barley, canola and peas

Citation

Page, E.R., S. Meloche, A. Thibodeau, M. Moran, J. Larsen and J. Bae. 2021. Evaluating dry edible beans as a double crop following winter barley, canola and peas. Annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Agronomy, Halifax, N.S., November 14-17.

Résumé

Weed control is one of the primary challenge associated with dry edible bean production in southern Ontario. Season long weed control can be difficult to achieve because there are few herbicide active ingredients available that do no injure the crop and are efficacious on a wide range of weed species. Integrated weed management practices that help to suppress weed emergence are needed in order to reduce the reliance on herbicides. options are need . Double cropping, or the practice of growing a summer crop immediately following a winter crop, has the potential to simultaneously suppress early season weed emergence and shift the growth and development of less competitive crops to periods of the growing season where weed emergence is reduced. Field trials to evaluate double cropping with dry edible beans were established in 2020 and 2021 at the Harrow Research and Development Centre. Dry edible beans were seeded in early July of both years, following winter barley, canola and peas respectively. Spring seeded plots of conventionally managed dry beans were included as the benchmark and weedy and weed-free dry beans treatments were established in order to evaluate the impact on crop yields. Results of the research demonstrate that, while double crop dry beans yield less than the conventional control, the system as a whole has the potential to be more profitable than dry beans as a sole crop.