Goondiwindi consultant Michael Castor and Associates and scientists from CSIRO/APSRU have begun working together to lift chickpea and mungbean yields in south west Queensland and north west New South Wales (NSW).

Answers to variable and often disappointing yields will improve grower and adviser confidence in the two crops and potentially lead to a dramatic increase in the area sown to pulses.

The project, supported by growers and the Federal Government through the Grains Research & Development Corporation, is one of the first in the northern region to be led by private consultants.

It calls for the results of the three years of research to be communicated to industry through revised advice on Best Management Practice in chickpeas and mungbeans, as well as through accredited courses for agronomists, agribusiness and farmers.

According to Paul Castor, there is a clear gap between commercial yields and physiological expectations for chickpea and mungbean crops in these western regions, even for crops grown using current best management recommendations.

Yields have rarely attained those benchmarked either against crops grown on the eastern Darling Downs, North Star and the Breeza Plain, or against simulated yields based on current understanding of pulse physiology and agronomy.

"Disappointing yields, particularly for mungbeans, is the major issue holding back the greater adoption of pulses in the farming system on western grain farms," Mr Castor said.

"Farmers and agronomists are keen to include pulses in grain farm rotations – to diversify income, control weeds, provide disease breaks for cereals and improve soil fertility – but are hesitant due to their variable or low yields.

"We have worked with grower clients in the region to consolidate rotations of four, five, even six years, that include a pulse at some point.

"Chickpeas certainly look the better bet so far. Mungbeans haven’t succeeded to our satisfaction, in that we haven’t been able to say constantly that a crop of them is going to yield successfully, so there’ll be a heavy initial focus on chickpeas."

Mr Castor said much of the considerable agronomic research on pulses had addressed single components like row configuration, planting date, disease and insect control and soil fertility.

And they had been conducted on the better soils and without addressing the highly variable climate and soil types encountered in the western regions.

The present gap between farmer yields and commercially attractive yields was not likely due to deficiencies in any of these single agronomic components but rather due to lack of adaptive management systems that dealt with the varied environmental and management regimes encountered on western grain farms.