Performance Story: Crop Sequencing of Large Acreage Crops and Special Crops
William May, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Indian Head Research Farm
Producers are always evaluating their crop sequences and rotations seeking to maximize returns without jeopardizing future income through poor agronomic practices. Producers who are growing or want to grow special crops like canaryseed, coriander, hemp or quinoa lack this valuable information. The objectives of this research were to determine the best fit of special crops into crop sequences and to determine if optimum crop sequences change depending on the environment. A multi-location field study was initiated at Indian Head, Melfort, Saskatoon, and Swift Current to evaluate the impact of eight crop stubbles, wheat, oats, canola, pea, canaryseed, are seeded perpendicular to the strips in the first year. After examining the results several conclusions can be reached including:
Of all the broadleaf crops in this study, coriander showed the clearest preference for being seeded into a cereal crop versus being seeded into a broad leaf crop.
Wheat, oat, canola, canaryseed and hemp were able to tolerate a wide range of crop stubbles
Pea stubble appearing to provide a slight increase in the grain yield of wheat compared to the other seven crops.
Oat seeded into canaryseed stubble tended to have a higher probability of wild oat in the harvested sample than the other stubble crops. This highlights the risk of seeding oat into canaryseed stubble or any stubble in which wild oat control is less than optimal. The same risk exists when the order of the two crops is reversed and canaryseed is seeded into oat stubble
There was a small trend of pea grain yield being most consistent on oat and wheat stubble.
Oat, canola and coriander presented the biggest risk as volunteer plants in the next crop and a plan should be in place to deal with these volunteers when seeding into these stubbles.
Quinoa grain yield was supressed to very low levels. Several insect species at different points in the life cycle of the quinoa were impacting the growth, production and yield of quinoa. The impact of these insect species was so large that it became difficult to determine any stubble effects. Research by Wist and Mori (2019) have shed significant light on this problem. (T. Wist and B. Mori 2019. Investigating and developing monitoring tools for insect pests of quinoa on the Prairies. Pp 1-51 Final Report to ADF. Please contact Dr Wist at tyler.wist@canada.ca for the report). Currently two dominant pests of quinoa have been identified, the goosefoot groundling moth, Scrobipalpa atriplicella (von Röslerstamm) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), which attacks quinoa heads and secondarily invades stems and larvae from a stem-boring fly, Amauromyza karli, (Diptera: Agromyzidae), which begins by leaf-mining, then bores into stems and destroys the vascular tissue.
This data set contains results from normal to dryer than normal environments. Additional research with site years with above-average precipitation will be beneficial and a current study involving Indian Head and three locations in Alberta should assist with improving our knowledge base on crop sequencing. In addition, there are other crops that were not included in this study that would benefit from crop sequencing research, including barley, flax, and flax-chickpea intercrop if the production area keeps expanding.