17 Sep 2024. Paul McIntosh, Pulse Australia and WeedSmart.
Spring has been a bit of a surprise in that it has been fairly warm, some would say even hot at times. With my long-held belief that planting Mungbeans in early spring can be a roll of the dice, because of Mungbeans’ chilling sensitive status, this 2024 Springtime seems to be well over my 20 degrees C soil and air temps preferred, for the planting and growing of our favourite summer legume.
With me in the photo is Dr Kylie Wenham of QAAFI, based at the Gatton Uni campus. Kylie has plenty of experience in Mungbean research and is a much-valued member of the current GRDC Mungbean research project. The Censeo lead project with Majella Bathurst, is essentially “recruiting” growers and agronomists throughout the Qld and NSW farming systems, to address regional specific environmental conditions, plus trial different agronomic inputs for improved success in growing our short and quick summer legume crop.
There will be grower trial blocks from North Qld to South NSW and many may well have similar differences of input or specific agronomy demonstrations in that wide area of Eastern Australia. These local area demo blocks will focus on providing before and after data from key Mungbean needs like soil nutrient testing, plant available water capacity assessment, or even utilising various inoculation procedures, plus other agronomic inputs decided by growers and their agronomy advisors.
From myself, I believe that successful inoculation procedures will look to increase and stabilise yields in our Mungbean demo blocks, compared to local best management practices. It always surprises people to know, that to grow one tonne per hectare of Mungbeans, the crop needs about 70 kgs per hectare of Nitrogen from the soil solution or by NDFA. NDFA is short for Nitrogen Derived from the Atmosphere and refers directly to our legume inoculation processes and lack of active nodules full of live Rhizobia bacteria on the root systems of many Mungbean crops. For two tonne per hectare yields of Mungs, they are more like 115 kgs per hectare required of plant available Nitrogen and so on up the yield ladder.
This 4-year project will certainly compare and tease out the best way and the most successful inputs in the growing of our Mungs in various areas and situations. General communications already to myself from growers and advisors’ points to more interest in growing Mungbeans this coming summer season, with falling cereal grain prices and with Fall Armyworm (FAW), possible outbreaks this summer affecting our grass type crops.
Always keen to chat to more farmers and their agronomy, in growing mung beans and especially those who wish to put their hands up to be part of this demo project for getting the absolute best out of growing mungs on their properties with their machinery and soil types.
That’s all folks,
Paul McIntosh (JP Qual)