In Asia, and increasingly world-wide, there is demand for high quality marrowfat peas for the snack food processing industries. This is an attractive value-added market for New Zealand pea growers who have traditionally grown European marrowfat cultivars bred for canning in Europe.

The new pea is the first variety to be released from a joint breeding programme between Midlands Seeds Ltd (Ashburton) and Crop & Food Research.

Midlands Seeds manager Brian Davidson said, the pea was going to be popular.

"All seed so far available has been allocated. More will become available in 2000, but we expect it to be quickly taken up. This field pea has been bred for New Zealand conditions and for our off-shore markets so growers can expect good crops, good demand and good returns."

Crop & Food Research pea breeder, Adrian Russell, and Brian Davidson have been working with Japanese importers and snack processors to evaluate the pea.

"Grain colour and size are critical for the snack food processing industries in Japan and South East Asia. In collaboration with key market players we've bred a pea with improved internal grain colour, which when gritted, produces a visually darker extruded snack product - just what they want," Adrian Russell said.

The new pea also has excellent resistance to pea powdery mildew - a disease that can significantly reduce grain yield and quality. It is the only commercially available marrowfat cultivar in the world known to be resistant to powdery mildew. The addition of genes for powdery mildew resistance has eliminated the need to apply foliar fungicides.

The marrowfat pea is similar in maturity and growth habit to existing marrowfat cultivars so should fit well into current pea production programmes.

The head licensee for this pea is Midlands Seed Ltd (Ashburton) which, in conjunction with Crop & Food Research, has applied for Plant Variety Rights for the new pea, currently known by its breeders' reference of 2E09. It will be named when the Plant Variety Rights application is complete later in the year.

By Iona Boase

Company news release
N1896