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Montana Ag Alert Cropland Disease 6 July, 2017 Common pulse crop disorders: nutrient, drought and disease The Schutter Diagnostic Laboratory (and Mary and Jessica’s cell phones) have seen a lot of chickpeas, peas, and lentils looking a bit peaked these days. Here’s a rundown of the common things: 1. Yellow chickpeas. In the beginning, these plants were scattered and we put the cause up to damaged seed/’chickpeas just do that.’ Now, whole fields are affected, probably exacerbated by the hot dry conditions. In many cases, the lower part of the plant is yellow while the upper leaves are green. It is very difficult to dig pulse crop roots out of cement, so many of the roots we have seen are stripped and have very few nodules. Some have root rot, particularly Rhizoctonia root rot. We are speculating that nodulation may have been poor in the spring, and with the hot dry conditions the plants are harvesting nitrogen from the older leaves, causing them to turn yellow and drop off. Pics below. Root rot would exacerbate this by not allowing water to flow into the leaves as well as healthy roots. Yellowed chickpeas. Lower leaves are yellow, roots have very few nodules and some have root rot. Upper leaves are green. Symptoms cannot be tied to herbicide history.
