Trial Report Summary

Manitoba Pulse & Soybean Growers Association – Daryl Domitruk
PCDF (Roblin), WADO (Melita)

Evaluate agronomic performance of peas in a monocrop or when intercropped with oats, canola, spring wheat, flax or mustard.

At Roblin, pea-oat intercrop had a net revenue of $214, which was the highest but was not significantly different from revenue obtained from pea-wheat, pea-canola and pea-mustard (Table 24k). However, pea-flax and pea sole had significantly (P=0.001) low net revenue of -$80 and $39, respectively, compared to other intercrop options. This implies that, selection of pea-flax intercrop results in significant losses by the producer under Roblin conditions in 2020.

Choice of an intercropping system depends on many factors including: weather, machinery available for
seeding, harvesting and separation of seed, economics and compatibility of the crops involved. Many
organic agriculture farmers have resorted to various intercropping systems with the aim of addressing
weed and disease pressure, which often inhibits organic systems under monoculture situations (Pridham and Entz, 2007). Scientists have been advocating for ways to counteract effects of climate change.
Intercropping systems can be one of the ways that can help address climate change in some ways such
as biological control of insect pests, weeds and diseases. Biological control allows for less use of
synthetic chemicals hence addressing the chemical resistance issues. Another benefit of intercropping is improving soil health at low cost considering residual nitrogen if a legume is included. In other studies,
pea-wheat intercropping systems have been shown to be efficient in the use of nitrogen due to their
spatial self-regulating dynamics, which allows pea to improve its interspecific competitive ability in fields
with lower soil nitrogen and vice versa for wheat (Andersen et al., 2004 and Ghaley et al., 2005). This
enables future options to reduce synthetic nitrogen inputs and negative environmental impacts of crop
production. Compared to pea sole crop, pea-oats intercrop results in reduced pea lodging because of
the support provided by oats to the pea crop, this also helps reduce harvesting difficulties and increase
economic returns (Kontturi et al., 2010). This study evaluated various intercrop combinations that can
be utilized by producers in different areas of production.

Entire findings are available by downloading the report PDF.

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