Paddock selection & rotation
Benefits to cereal rotations
Lentils bring the following benefits to cereal rotations:
- An alternative pulse, increasing the yields of following cereal crops and allowing an extended phase of cropping.
- Decrease many cereal diseases-grass free lentil crops help control root diseases CCN and Take-all.
- Control weeds-grass selective herbicides can be used on lentils to control self-sown cereals and competitive grass weeds difficult to control in cereal crops, e.g. Brome grass and Barley grass.
- Can be crop topped to prevent herbicide resistant weeds from setting seed.
- Available soil nitrogen is maintained or improved.
- Spread management due to their divergent growth and development allow sowing, spraying and harvest windows to be widened.
- Well adapted to no till, standing stubble systems aimed at improving soil sustainability.
Depressed cereal growth following cereal the previous year.
Good cereal growth following a pulse the previous year.
W Hawthorne, Pulse Australia