Research Objective
Faba beans are the most efficient nitrogen fixers of all Western Canadian pulse crops and perform well in northern Saskatchewan growing conditions. However, disease management can be complicated for this crop. This project aimed to determine if intercropping faba beans and oats will significantly reduce chocolate spot in the crop in northern Saskatchewan growing environments and the impacts of nitrogen fertilizer use on yield and disease incidence when intercropping faba beans and oats.
Intercropping did not appear to affect disease incidence at either site. However, this could have been due to other factors, including challenging growing conditions, wild and volunteer oats competition, and insect damage. Nitrogen fertilization did have a statistically significant impact on oat protein in both Melfort and Prince Albert, suggesting that reducing nitrogen application by 50% or more of the recommended rate for oats in an intercrop could compromise the quality of the oats.
There is still potential for successful intercropping of faba beans and cereals in Saskatchewan. Future research should explore intercropping faba beans with a cereal crop that is less competitive than oats or planting the cereal and the faba beans in separate rows to reduce the amount of competition within the crop.