Regional Reviews, Region 1: North America

Abstract

Cool season food legumes including dry pea, lentil, and chickpea are important components of farming systems in the dry-land regions of the western United States, most notably the Palouse region of eastern Washington and northern Idaho, and the provinces of western Canada, particularly Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba. Production has increased dramatically in western Canada over the past five years and also production increases have taken place in North Dakota and South Dakota. California is a major U.S. producer of chickpeas. Current production in the U.S. stands at about 75,000 tonnes of lentils, 150,000 tonnes of peas and 16,000 tonnes of chickpeas, while production in Canada stands at about 420,000 tonnes of lentils, and 1,250,000 tonnes of peas. Production of faba bean, lupin and grasspea is minimal in the U.S. and Canada. Major constraints to production include Ascochyta blight of lentil and chickpea; and root rots, wilts, powdery mildew, Mycosphaerella blight and viruses of pea. Viruses are problematic on chickpea, lentil and peas in the US in years when aphid-vector populations increase early in the growing season. Current breeding programs are concentrated on the development of cultivars that will alleviate constraints to production while meeting market demands. As a result of the success of the breeding programs, cultivars in use have changed considerably over the past 10 years, a trend that is likely to continue. Most of the U.S. food legume crop is exported as food while the Canadian crop is exported as both food and feed. Current trends point to increased production in Canada and in North Dakota and South Dakota. The trend to replace summer fallowing in the western United States and Canada with annual cropping has provided considerable additional land area for expanded production of cool season food legumes.KeywordsPowdery MildewFaba BeanAscochyta BlightWestern ProvinceFood LegumeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.