NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
April 13, 2000
Dry edible bean producers from North Dakota and western Minnesota who belong to the Northarvest Bean Growers Association have been making a dramatic switch from rust-susceptible to rust-resistant pinto bean varieties in recent years, says a plant pathologist at North Dakota State University. Those rust-resistant pinto varieties could be saving dry bean producers hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars during years when conditions favor rust development.
In 1996, Northarvest members planted only 1 percent of their pinto acres to rust-resistant varieties, but in 1999 they planted 81 percent of their pinto acres to five rust-resistant varieties: Chase, Frontier, Maverick, Remington and Winchester.
"The amount of disease is going to vary each year due to environmental factors, but when conditions are favorable, rust can be seriously damaging to susceptible varieties, in terms of both yield and quality," says Art Lamey, extension plant pathologist at NDSU. "The majority of pinto acres now are ones where growers may have to watch for rust, but they probably won't have to spray for rust."
Extrapolating from recent dry bean grower surveys, Lamey estimates that perhaps as much as 46 percent of the pinto acreage in the Northarvest growing region received rust fungicides in 1995, 66 percent in 1996 and 18 percent in 1997, the year the rust-resistant variety Maverick became available to commercial dry bean producers.
In 1999, about 45 percent of the dry bean production, or 360,000 acres, was devoted to pinto beans in the Northarvest growing region, Lamey says. Without access to rust-resistant pinto varieties, and assuming environmental conditions would have favored rust development in 1999, anywhere from 65,000 to 238,000 acres may have required rust fungicides, based on grower surveys from 1995 through 1997. Rust fungicides for dry beans average about $12.50 to $13 an acre per application.
"There is no question that these new rust-resistant pinto bean varieties are saving producers significant amounts of money in terms of their input costs, but that's not taking into account the issue of enhanced yield under favorable growing conditions," Lamey stresses.
In 1994, Othello was the leading pinto variety among Northarvest growers, at nearly 48 percent of all pinto acres, but by 1998 producers planted Othello on only 2.3 percent of their pinto acres, Lamey says. By contrast, Maverick plantings comprised only 8.6 percent of all pinto acres in 1997, the first year seed was available for commercial production. In 1998, Maverick accounted for nearly 43 percent of all pinto acres, and Northarvest producers reported planting Maverick on 56 percent of their pinto acres last year.
Maverick is an NDSU variety developed by Ken Grafton in the department of plant sciences, along with scientists from plant pathology and food and nutrition. In six years of yield trials at 24 sites in North Dakota, Maverick outyielded Othello by an average of 14.5 percent and Topaz by an average of 17.6 percent, Grafton says. Maverick is resistant to all prevalent races of rust. Maverick's quality factors for canning have been judged to be better than those of Othello, Topaz and Fiesta.
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Source: Art Lamey, (701) 231-7056
Editor: Dean Hulse, (701) 231-6136