Winter Beans

Winter beans offer a low growing cost compared to OSR and good cultural blackgrass control.

Crops will leave good levels of residual nitrogen for the following cereal crop. A wide sowing window offers opportunity to spread the workload.

For more information, speak to your Agrii agronomist or call your local seed contact here

The Benefits of Pulse Crops

✚ As a nitrogen fixing crop, winter beans are a good addition to the rotation.
✚ One of the lower risk break crops to grow and with excellent durability.
✚ A wide range of straightforward establishment methods can be used.
✚ Great soil structure improving capacity, leaving an excellent entry for wheat.

There are a range of varieties suited to most parts of the country.

Ideally, crops can be sown from mid-October through to December, or if sown in January or February then seed rates should be adjusted upwards to allow for less branching – taking into account the breeder’s latest safe sowing recommendations.

Establishment of crops is split equally between sowing on top and ploughing in, conventional plough and cultivate/min-till systems. If crops are sown to a sufficient depth (around at least 10 cm) to enable good root growth over the winter, then this increases drought tolerance later in the growing season – this is where winter beans will usually perform better than their spring counterparts when under environmental pressure.

Some varieties have reasonable resistance to Ascochyta but other diseases can become an issue such as chocolate spot, rust and in some years, downy mildew.

Seed treatments are not regularly used on winter beans, however Take Off ST is available to aid establishment and early growth via improved root development, particularly in difficult conditions.