Growing Pulse Crops

At the time of this interview, Steve Sebesta was the director of the Foundation Seed Program at North Dakota State University and the Deputy Commissioner of the North Dakota State Seed Department. Steve has since retired from these positions, so we were very lucky to capture his years of experience and expertise in this area before his retirement. In this episode, Steve discusses the critical role of the foundation seedstocks program, how the plant variety protection act works and why seed needs to be certified.

“North Dakota is a little unique compared to most other states in that we have a county seed increase program. So when a new variety is released and we have foundation seed available, the counties decide whether or not they want to produce seed in their county of that new variety. And if they do, then their county grower, who is typically an experienced grower, will produce seed essentially for the county. It's not his seed. He doesn't have ownership of it. It's for the county seed grower. So it's a really good way to increase the amount of seed available of a brand new variety very quickly.” - Steve Sebesta

Germination success, variety identification and weed presence contribute to the certification of seed that allows for the label required for selling seed in North Dakota. North Dakota has the largest seed certification agency in the country, with between 250,000 and 300,000 acres of seed production every year. Of that, field peas is their third largest crop, with over 21,000 acres in 2023. 

“A lot of the public varieties were funded by government programs, federal government programs. And so they needed a way to try to incentivize investment in research and development and production of new varieties. So they implemented the Plant Variety Protection Act which gives the variety owner the exclusive authority to determine who can and cannot produce seed of their product and market that seed. So there are a lot of infringements that are possible on a PVP variety that people need to be aware of.”  - Steve Sebesta

This Week on Growing Pulse Crops:

• Meet Steve Sebesta who recently retired as the director of the Foundation Seed Program at North Dakota State University and the Deputy Commissioner of the North Dakota State Seed Department
• Discover the function, purpose and process of the Foundation Seed Program as well as the requirements that must be met for seed to be labeled as certified

Growing Pulse Crops is produced by Dr. Audrey Kalil and hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast. 

Nicole Atchison is the CEO of PURIS Holdings, a vertically-integrated plant-based food company that operates from field to fork in primarily yellow peas. Nicole leads the agriculture side of the business, including contracting with growers, seed development and breeding, and innovation in product development. Her brother Tyler leads the ingredient side of the business. PURIS operates throughout the entire supply chain from developing genetics to developing new markets. 

“So if you're making a high protein cereal, you need a different pea protein than if you're making a plant-based beverage, which is still using a pea protein. But those two pea proteins are slightly different. And that's really the innovation that we do on our processing side, is we create these different proteins with different functionalities so that they can work in these different applications.”  - Nicole Atchison

Atchison describes the wet protein processing they are using that provides a unique protein stream with a lot of potential for furthering plant-based protein production. She sees potential for pulse proteins in providing protein sources for both consumer beverages and medical nutrition. As they ramp up production, PURIS Holdings is also active in ongoing efforts to regulate the impact of foreign pulse crop processing and imports affecting both global and domestic markets.

“I'm a huge advocate for pulse based ingredients because I do think that as much as we want and encourage people to have and eat whole pulses, that's not where the American consumer is today. We like convenient foods, packaged and processed. That's where our market is. And so we need to be able to drive these crops into those channels as well and that's why processing is so critical to the market.” - Nicole Atchison

This Week on Growing Pulse Crops:

• Meet Nicole Atchison is the CEO of PURIS Holdings
• Discover the journey PURIS Holdings has taken to develop plant-based proteins and their initial introduction to pulse crops
• Explore the global ingredient market for pulses and the operations of processing pulse crops

Growing Pulse Crops is produced by Dr. Audrey Kalil and hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast. 

Dr. Eric von Wettberg is a professor at the University of Vermont and the director of the Vermont Agriculture Experiment Station. His research program focuses on understanding crop domestication as a means to harness the diversity of crop wild relatives to breed crops with improved climate resilience and stress tolerance. In this episode we discuss Von Wettberg’s work in pulses, his adventures in germplasm collection, the challenges and opportunities of maintaining genetic diversity, and the importance of protecting crop wild relatives. 

“We're never fully done with collecting germplasm because there might be more out there and those plants are in a natural habitat. That habitat is not static, so they may be changing over time. There's diseases in some natural populations and disease resistance can actually evolve. So we need to be collecting germplasm continually, and we should even have preserves or parks that hold crop wild relatives. To let them evolve so that we can let evolution generate more resistant varieties for us.”  - Dr. Eric von Wettberg

Von Wettberg shares his concern with the loss of genetic variation in crops, particularly pulses, as a result of human cultivation and selection. A lack of genetic variation reduces resilience of these crops to expected effects of climate change such as drought and disease. In his research group, they are using a new collection of the wild relatives of chickpea to restore genetic variation to cultivated chickpea, and to better understand the genetic basis of flowering time and drought tolerance. 

“Any mutation, whether it's a new mutation or an old mutation, is helpful. But by collecting, we're more likely to find the old mutations… By looking in wild populations, there's just been more time for those mutations to occur, which makes them a helpful place to look.” - Dr. Eric von Wettberg

This Week on Growing Pulse Crops:

• Meet Dr. Eric von Wettberg is a professor at the University of Vermont and the director of the Vermont Agriculture Experiment Station
• Explore the impact the loss of genetic variation can have on crop varieties and what is being done to mitigate that risk

Growing Pulse Crops is produced by Dr. Audrey Kalil and hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast. 

Charlie Cahill developed his knowledge of dryland farming during the 1990s, ultimately becoming what one nominator called “the go-to guy” for information on agronomic practices and seed genetics in the region. A graduate of Montana State University, Cahill has served on the board of the Montana Seed Growers Association and helped create the pulse checkoff program in Montana, which allows growers a voice in how their contributions are invested around the state.

“Farmers traditionally have been used to being able to keep and trade their own seed amongst other growers, and this has been going on (for) an exceptional amount of time. Well, if you don't have money to actually go into the breeding programs, you don't get new stuff. And if you look at all of the crops that have money in them: corn, canola, soybeans. We spend a lot of money for the seed, but at the same time, you'll notice we also get really neat stuff.” - Charlie Cahill

Cahill joins the show to talk about the current state of the seed industry in Montana, some inside information on the seed business and what’s driving seed choices, and trying to bring together market demand and producer needs into a valuable and profitable seed technology. 

“The demand right now is far outstripping the supply on (lentil) seed.  We are probably one of the largest sellers of lentil seed in the United States and we're sold out at the moment, and our production was okay. So that gives you an idea.” - Charlie Cahill

This Week on Growing Pulse Crops:

• Meet Charlie Cahill of Cahill Seeds, and learn about the history of pulse seed production in Montana
• Learn about some of the drivers of pulse crop seed development
• Hear more about what buyers of pulses are looking for in genetics in the future
• Discover what it’s like be an independent seed producer

Growing Pulse Crops Podcast is hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast.

Dr. Michelle Hubbard leads a field, greenhouse, growth chamber and lab based research program at Agriculture and AgriFood Canada, a part of the Canadian federal government. Based in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, her work focuses on pulse pathology, including important diseases like ascochyta blight of chickpea, root rot of pea and lentil and anthracnose of lentil. Hubbard discusses a mystery illness that has been popping up in parts of Saskatchewan and other areas in recent years. She shares the symptoms of this disease and the extensive research that has been done to try to understand what exactly is going on so that we can start to manage for it in the future. 

She provides insights not only into pulse pathology, but also into the approach scientists like herself take to try to find answers for farmers.

“It is frustrating, but it's also interesting and I keep going by thinking we're learning other things. Even if we're not finding an answer to this problem, we're learning other useful things like about drought and Verticillium and nematodes.”  - Dr. Michelle Hubbard

The exact pathogenesis of the mystery illness in chickpeas continues to elude researchers despite major efforts. The disease first emerged in 2019 and made its mark by creating severe crop loss similar to ascochyta blight. However, these chickpeas did not demonstrate obvious girdling and patterns of being transmitted airborne like typical ascochyta blight. Drought stress followed by rainfall was another factor explored for explaining the unique symptoms observed in the field but this too was disproved in trials. Herbicide application without moisture was another factor explored and it too could not be replicated successfully. The investigation continues with Dr. Hubbard offering this advice to producers. 

“Keep an eye out for it, but (don't) panic about it. If they want to find out more information or pictures, there's a lot of pictures on the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers website, as well as some old reports dating back to the beginning of the issue that explains it really well and shows pictures and examples. Or if somebody wants to contact me, I'm happy to send pictures or to help you find a link where you can find more pictures.” - Dr. Michelle Hubbard

This Week on Growing Pulse Crops:

• Meet Dr. Michelle Hubbard a plant pathologist who leads a field, greenhouse, growth chamber and lab based research program at Agriculture and AgriFood Canada
• Understand the emergence and research related to identifying this mystery chickpea illness
• Learn more about Dr. Hubbard’s work at AgriFood Canada by visiting her webpage 
• Check out the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers webpage as well to learn more about this emerging concern

Growing Pulse Crops is produced by Dr. Audrey Kalil and hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast. 

Dr. Tom Warkentin is a professor at the University of Saskatchewan where he is part of a team at the Crop Development Center. He has been a pulse crop breeder for about 30 years, mostly focused on field peas. Warkentin discusses the progress of his pulse crop breeding program over the decades, including varieties that have had a big impact on the industry. He also shares how he balances the need to improve genetics on multiple fronts all at once, like yield, quality, lodging, disease resistance, protein and a number of other factors. He’ll also cover what’s in the pipeline currently for new varieties and what questions and areas of research are still left unanswered. 

“Definitely yield is first and we keep pushing to improve yield. I think if we go through the records we’ve probably boosted yield 1 to 2% per year if you take the long-term average over a couple of decades. Second trait that farmers definitely like is lodging resistance, so the ability to stay upright. That has remained as probably the second most important trait in pea varieties over the last 30 years.”  - Dr. Tom Warkentin

Other priorities they focus on include protein quality and quantity, root rot resistance and ascochyta resistance. Dr. Warkentin discusses where these priorities come from including producer requests, processor preferences and consumer demands. Employing different techniques to highlight different characteristics is a lengthy difficult process in plant genetics that Dr. Warkentin’s team have been fine-tuning for years.

“So a combination of conventional breeding and marker assisted breeding and screening material with the actual pathogens, either indoors or outdoors.  All of those approaches we're using.” - Dr. Tom Warkentin

This Week on Growing Pulse Crops:

• Meet Dr. Tom Warkentin, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan where he is part of a team at the Crop Development Center.
• Discover the priorities of genetic traits that his breeding program is addressing in peas and the impact this development is having on the pulse crop industry
• Explore the process the plant breeding team is employing to improve pulse crop genetics
• Learn more about Dr. Warkentin’s work at the University of Saskatchewan by visiting his research webpage 

Growing Pulse Crops is produced by Dr. Audrey Kalil and hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast. 

Zack Bateson is the Research Manager at the National Ag Genotyping Center based in Fargo, North Dakota. You heard a little bit about the work the National Genotyping Center is doing in episode five with Dr. Brian Jenks.  In this episode we dive deeper into the services they offer to provide DNA testing for farmers and agronomists. Bateson got his start in DNA-based testing working in wildlife biology with prairie chickens and lizards, but says all of the skills can be applied to any organisms including variety detection, herbicide resistance, and soil pathogens, which is where he focuses today. 

“Growers can send us kochia and we can genotype them for the resistance to group 14. Then they're able to have a discussion with either their agronomists or other consultants to see whether it can be another actionable spraying opportunity or if there's something else that they can do about these resistant weeds.” - Zach Bateson

The National Ag Genotyping Center is a private nonprofit diagnostic lab that provides genetic testing to identify pathogens, pests and genetic traits such as resistance to herbicides. This valuable information can help growers determine next steps in treatment of fields without having to rely solely on potentially costly trial and error practices. Alongside these established practices they are also developing identification testing for different causes of root rot.

“The work involved is simpler for a person to do, especially with robotics, we can not only do tens of samples per day, but we can extract from hundreds of samples per day. We can test for multiple genetic markers throughout the day, so we're talking hundreds and almost thousands of data points that can be processed and reported out.” - Zach Bateson

This Week on Growing Pulse Crops:

• Meet Zack Bateson, the Research Manager at the National Ag Genotyping Center based in Fargo, North Dakota
• Explore the work done at the National Ag Genotyping Center and the value they provide growers in North Dakota. 
• Discover the support and research being developed at the National Ag Genotyping Center and the future projects they expect to participate in

Growing Pulse Crops is produced by Dr. Audrey Kalil and hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast. 

Dr. Brian Jenks is a weed scientist at North Dakota State University based in Minot. He has been in this role since 1997 and over that time he has seen an alarming rise in resistance to many of our herbicides from certain weeds, especially in kochia. In this episode Jenks discusses the resistance problem and some of the work underway to help farmers manage these weeds that are getting tougher every year to control. He also shares an exciting new offering from the Ag Genotyping Center to identify resistance.

“I've been polling farmers this winter and the most common answer I get is about 80%. Farmers think about 80% of their kochia is roundup resistant. So it's a majority of the kochia and we know that there's group 14 resistance out there to Aim and Sharpen. So if we want to control kochia in a burn down, we need to know  if Aim and Sharpen are going to work for us.” - Dr. Brian Jenks

Spray droplet size, travel speed when spraying and the height of the kochia when treated are all factors that greatly affect the success of herbicide use. True resistance however will be able to survive each of these adjustments. Developing new mechanisms of action and products to circumvent the resistance is a lengthy difficult process with no clear immediate solution in site. With resistance observed in many commonly used herbicides, gramoxone seems to be the only one that remains consistently effective. Unfortunately resistance is likely to emerge here too without other measures being taken.

“The worst thing we can do is probably a two year rotation where we're using the same herbicides and the same crops over and over.  I'm optimistic if we can diversify our crops to get a minimum of 3, 4, 5 crops in the rotation,  and then use 5, 6, 7 different modes of action with our herbicides.” - Dr. Brian Jenks

This Week on Growing Pulse Crops:

• Meet Dr. Brian Jenks, a weed scientist at North Dakota State University
• Explore the growing problem of herbicide resistant kochia and the impact this problem will have on pulse crop production
• Understand the significance of different spray techniques and following up on spray treatments with early season monitoring

Growing Pulse Crops is produced by Dr. Audrey Kalil and hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast. 

Dr. Chris Graham is an associate professor at South Dakota State University. He’s also the manager of the West River Research Farm near Sturgis, South Dakota. At that facility they focus a lot on regenerative agriculture, including doing a lot of work with peas and other pulses to extend crop rotations in that semi-arid region in the western part of the state. Graham shares about pulse production in South Dakota, focusing mostly on field peas. He also shares some of the complexities of nitrogen fixation, including what it might look like to have farm-specific microbial inoculant mixes in the future. 

“When you look at the growth of wheat, generally the yield is set first and then the protein is made later in its life cycle. And so we often see peas, obviously they're harvested and they start to decay, and that slow decay releases nitrogen  later in the wheat growing season. And so we often see a protein bump with wheat following peas.” - Dr. Chris Graham

While there isn’t a lot of acreage in pulses in South Dakota yet, Graham calls field peas the “nickel slots” of the pulses. In other words, a great place to start incorporating them into a rotation with a low barrier to entry. He highlights that your soil nitrogen content will likely not increase but your input needs may decrease when pulses are used.

“It's still nitrogen that you didn't have to apply and it's also nitrogen that the plant did not necessarily take up from the soil. And so it's conserving some of that nitrogen that's being made available just on that baseline level.  ” - Dr. Chris Graham

This Week on Growing Pulse Crops:

• Meet Dr. Chris Graham, an associate professor at South Dakota State University and the manager of the West River Research Farm near Sturgis, South Dakota
• Explore the potential use of pulse crops in rotations in South Dakota
• Discover the niche pulses can fill in rotation as a broadleaf crop capable of nitrogen fixation

Visit Dr. Graham’s webpage here.

Growing Pulse Crops is produced by Dr. Audrey Kalil and hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast.

Dr. Breanne Tidemann is a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada based in Lacombe, Alberta. As a weed scientist, her job is to explore new and novel ways to manage weeds. Her focus is to research applied management strategies, weed biology and ecology, and screening for herbicide resistance. In this episode, Tidemann discusses the work she has been leading in Canada on the effectiveness of weed seed destruction technology including the use of mills and shares that this approach can be a very helpful tool in the toolbox especially in pulses.

“By and large, on the vast majority of weed species that have been tested in Canada and the United States, we're seeing greater than 95% control of what goes into those mills…There's the odd one here or there that's a little bit lower, but when I say it's a little bit lower, we're typically still talking greater than 80% control.” - Dr. Breanne Tidemann

Tideman shares the concern that at the end of the season the remaining weeds have managed to survive everything the farmer has put them through. They are therefore the fittest weeds that are the most difficult to get rid of. She proposes that rather than spreading those weed seeds all over the field with a combine we need to focus on destroying them. This process may not solve any weed problems for the crop you're harvesting, but it does start the weed management for the next year early and can have real impacts on future production. 

“So there's six main methods of harvest weed seed control. Some of them are things we would consider using in North America, like the weed seed destruction technology.…it's basically trying to turn the combine from a weed seed spreader into a weed seed predator” - Dr. Breanne Tidemann

This Week on Growing Pulse Crops:

• Meet Dr. Breanne Tidemann a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada based in Lacombe, Alberta
• Explore the value and purpose of research regarding harvest weed seed control especially as it relates to crops with limited herbicide options such as pulse crops
• Discover current methods and equipment that are effective for harvest weed seed control and are available in North America

Connect with Dr. Tidemann on Twitter @breannetidemann or visit her website here.

Growing Pulse Crops is produced by Dr. Audrey Kalil and hosted by Tim Hammerich of the Future of Agriculture Podcast.