Cooperative Extension Service Communications and Technology Department 3354 1000 E. University Ave. Laramie, WY 82071 (307) 766-2540 • fax (307) 766-3998 • www.uwyo.edu

 

For Immediate Release

 

Contact: Robert Waggener, Editor

Phone: (307) 766-3571

E-mail: robertw@uwyo.edu

 

Date: July 31, 2006

Regional interest in pea production growing

            Interest in producing peas as a grain or forage is increasing on the northern Great Plains, according to researchers in a new bulletin jointly released by the University of Wyoming Cooperative Extension Service (UW CES), South Dakota State University Extension and University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension.

            Pea (Pisum sativum) is an annual, cool-season grain legume, or “pulse crop,” primarily used as human food, but it is also used widely as livestock feed, forage and manure.

            As a forage crop, field pea is commonly grown in mixture with cereal grains to increase the protein concentration.

            U.S. production has traditionally been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, but production is expanding rapidly into the northern Great Plains, said one of the authors, Professor Jim Krall, a crop specialist with the UW College of Agriculture’s Department of Plant Sciences.

            The initiation of a U.S. Department of Agriculture pulse crop loan rate for dry pea, the development of new varieties and the potential for pea production on dry land and limited irrigation conditions has generated this interest, said Krall, who is stationed at UW’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Extension Center (SAREC) near Lingle.

            B-1175, Pea Production in the High Plains, provides High Plains producers with information for successful production of pea for grain or forage.

            “It should be fairly easy for farmers to utilize this bulletin and apply it to their farming programs, including the positives of growing peas and the pitfalls,” Krall said. “This should help them avoid some of the problems that always come about when you are growing a new crop.”

            The 12-page bulletin contains sections on plant description and adaptation, varieties, performance of grain pea in feeding rations, seedbed preparation and planting, fertilizer management, weed control, diseases, insects, harvesting, and markets and economics.

            It also discusses the new pea named “Forager,” which was jointly released by UW and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Forager is a spring pea primarily intended for forage production, and it should be readily available next year, Krall said.

            Other UW researchers contributing to the bulletin were Stephen D. Miller, director of the UW Agricultural Experiment Station; Jack Cecil, a research scientist at SAREC; and Assistant Professor Chris Bastian and Associate Research Scientist Thomas Foulke of the UW College of Agriculture’s Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics.

            Montana State University also provided research in addition to the three institutions that released the bulletin.

            It is available on the UW CES Web page at http://www.uwyo.edu/CES/plantsci.htm. Scroll to B-1175.

Free copies may also be obtained by e-mailing the College of Agriculture’s Resource Center at bixbyd@uwyo.edu, calling the center at (307) 766-2115, or writing to the University of Wyoming, College of Agriculture, Department 3313, 1000 E. University Ave., Laramie, WY 82071.

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