Pulse agronomist Mike Lucy (photo) admits growers do face plenty of challenges when they start working chickpeas into their cropping rotations. 

They’re right, Mr Lucy says, when they claim chickpeas need more complex management than cereals. And that chickpea yields in the past have been unreliable.

As well the crop is not well adapted to soils with heavily saline subsoils or paddocks prone to waterlogging.

Marketing chickpeas also irritates many growers, Mr Lucy says, but that’s because of misconceptions about who is to blame for price volatility and widely fluctuating returns – anywhere between $250 and $500/tonne.

“While grain traders and overseas importers often cop the rap for this, in reality the price volatility is almost solely due to exchange rate fluctuations between the Australian and US dollars,” he said.

“Chickpea prices on the international market are extremely stable, only fluctuating between $ US 300-$320/tonne landed port on the Indian subcontinent.

“And the benefits of including chickpeas in the rotation are very significant. Chickpeas have proved they can deliver yield and protein dividends in a following wheat crop of between 500 and 1000kg/ha, and an increase of one to 1.5 per cent protein across the region.

“Then there’s the significant reduction – up to 60 per cent – in crown rot inoculum, the chance of residual moisture at depth and more flexible and cost-effective weed control options.”

Mr Lucy should know what he is talking about, because the recent 2005 Chickpea Focus Conference in Goondiwindi acknowledged his contribution to extension activities in the chickpea industry, and particularly his efforts to promote management packages after the outbreak of the disease Ascochyta in 1998.

He drew on the results of long-term QDPI&F trials at Warra and Nindigully – where much of the research was supported by the Grains Research & Development Corporation (GRDC) – for hard data on the rotational benefits of chickpea.

On “brigalow” soils at Warra, wheat after chickpeas outyielded wheat on wheat by 990 kg/ha on average, while at Nindigully, on soils with a 40 year cropping history, the yield advantage after chickpea was 530 to 600 kg/ha, along with a 1.5 per cent improvement in protein.

The chickpea yields at Nindigully had averaged an impressive 1.9 t/ha, approaching the unfertilised wheat yields of 2.31 t/ha, probably because of improved water extraction by the chickpeas on “coolibah” soils, which were not saline at depth.

Leading, innovative growers had adopted the key principles of many years of farming systems research, incorporating chickpeas in systems based on zero till and controlled traffic and never planting the same crop back-to-back in the rotation.

“And the longer the cultivation history of a farm or paddock, the better response to chickpea is likely to be.” Mr Lucy said.

“If the industry followed the example of leading growers – with 20 to 40 per cent of their winter crop area under pulses – there should be well over a million hectares of winter pulses in the GRDC northern region. The current figure is about 200,000 hectares.”