After more than a decade of research, field peas have surpassed narrow-leafed lupins and emerged as the most widely adapted and highest yielding grain legume crop for Western Australia.

Department of Agriculture research has shown that field peas not only perform well on medium and heavy soils types, but also on sandy-surfaced and duplex soils.

Department researcher Peter White said on many soil types where lupins generally performed poorly, field peas produced higher yields.

“In a series of 40 trials over three seasons, field peas were compared to lupins,” Dr White said.

“The trials were arranged in clusters of up to three at each site, over a range of contrasting soil types from deep yellow sands - the preferred lupin soil type, through to the duplexes and loams.

“The research showed the yield of field peas was less variable than the yield of lupins over the range of soil types.  Field peas on average yielded 32 per cent more than lupins.”

Dr White said the research confirmed that when lupins were grown on soil types other than the most suitable soil types, yields were highly variable and seasonally dependent. 

Most importantly, the research found that field peas were a higher yielding and less variable alternative for the duplex soils and other poor performing lupin soil types.

“When field peas were compared to other pulse crops including faba beans, chickpeas, lentils and lupins, field peas were again found to produce higher yields, particularly in low rainfall environments or when grown on less favourable soil types,” Dr White said.

“At low yielding sites (1.4 t/ha) field pea was the highest yielding species, while faba beans often produced the highest seed yields under more favourable conditions.  The varieties available to growers and the agronomic packages have improved since this work was conducted, and farmers should expect to get even higher yields under similar circumstances.”

Yield of field pea and lupin taken from 40 trials on contrasting soil types

Mean yield from 36 trial sites in the WA grainbelt