Green Pea Variety for Montana

BOZEMAN - Mar 21/18 - SNS -- Plant breeders in Montana have developed a new green pea variety for the state's growing conditions with heavy seed weight and resistance to Fusarium oxysporum Race 1 as well as lodging.

Chengci Chen, superintendent of the MSU Eastern Agricultural Research Center in Sidney said MT457 was released from the university last month and will be commercially available in 2020.

"What's unique about this variety is that it's bred specifically to perform well in Montana," said Kevin McPhee, who holds a doctorate in plant sciences as MSU pulse crop breeder and professor in the Department of Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology. "I'm not confident this variety would perform well outside of Montana, in fact."

Chen and McPhee have been working together for more than a decade breeding and testing pea varieties for Montana -- before Montana produced the most pulse crops in the nation and before there were strong commodity markets for Big Sky peas. In Montana, pulse crops are chickpea, pea and lentil. In 2017, Montana farmers planted 525,000 acres of dry pea, according to the 2017 USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service.

Chen, who researches how pea crop yield and protein are affected by genetics that interact with diverse environments, said the new variety has a big seed size and bright color, which may be ideal for the green pea market in soups, salads or fried snack peas.

"This variety flowers and matures a few days earlier than other varieties, which presents some advantages to growers in central and southern regions of Montana to be able to avoid heat stress in the summer," he said. "From our statewide testing results in the past three years, this variety also performs very well under irrigated conditions."