Care is more critical with bean seedthan cereals

Two things in particular have increased the interest in pulse crops – the introduction of greening and the provision of coupled aid (up to €250/ha). These factors helped to increase the pulse area from over 4,000ha in 2014 to almost 10,500ha in 2015.

The main crop grown was beans and the need for larger growers to be sure of meeting their ecological focus (EFA) area requirement of 5% added to the benefit of the protein payment to drive this increase in 2015.

Beans were widely grown because they are the most straightforward of the pulse crops. The main pressure point has been getting soil conditions good enough between late January and early March to achieve timely sowing. However, recent research appears to be taking some of the pressure off of early planting in favour of early- to mid-March as an optimum sowing target.

The main grievance with the bean crop is its potential lateness in ripening, which can be as late as November. And during the growing season there can be significant challenges with foliar disease control; the prevention of chocolate spot can feature highly.

The fact that we now have active research on so many areas of bean husbandry, which is funded by the IFA, is a major boost to the crop for the future, and growers would be wise to pay heed to these findings.

Concerns over home-saved seed

While late harvest is a concern, there will always be an opportunity to harvest beans. Lateness of ripening can be a particular issue in some years and this has two consequences.

The first is the fact that the combine will need to stay in action for longer with the associated risk of sprouting late in the season. The second is the lateness of planting the following crop to conserve the free nitrogen.

One of the challenges with beans is their yield variability. There may well be lots of factors associated with this problem – I have sometimes suggested the slowness of nodulation to feed the young plant, but did you ever think that seed quality could be a factor?

Bean seed is generally not treated with chemicals prior to planting and so home-saved seed seems very attractive to growers who have beans sitting in the shed from the previous harvest.

Judging from the experiences of last spring, it would appear that there is quite a bit of home-saved seed used for planting beans. The temptation is obvious as the production of bean seed appears straightforward. But it is very important for growers to realise that beans can be the most difficult crop to home-save successfully.

Seed-borne problems can be serious for crop productivity and in terms of the contamination of otherwise clean land. Concerns here include ascochyta and stem nematodes, which can be very sporadic and difficult to detect without thorough sampling.

Even with harvesting at 20% moisture, bean germination and vigour are much more easily damaged during handling than most other crops. This may be partly due to the physical construction and location of the seed parts.

Given these facts, one must wonder if variable seed quality is one of the factors contributing to yield variability in this crop. Germination levels in beans can easily and quickly drop by 30% or more from just one handling event, as beans need to be dried down to enable safe handling.

Safety in certified

Certified bean seed offers the following assurances in pre- and post-harvest procedures to ensure viable clean seed is delivered disease-free for the following season’s plantings.

Native certified seed (C1) sold in Ireland is grown as basic seed and is called first generation seed, unlike some imported seed which can be red label or second generation. The blue label on the bag is a stamp to show that it was certified in Ireland according to DAFM certification standards.

Certified seed gives the grower the assurance that it has been grown, dried, stored, packed and handled to ensure that quality is maintained to a high standard. It is also checked for impurities as well as the presence of seed-borne diseases and the presence of harmful microscopic pests.

To read the full Certified Seed Focus Supplement click here.