Winter Dry Field Pea Program

When we purchased the genetics program from Rogers Seed in 1995, what attracted us most was the potential in the winter pea breeding program. It has proven to be as exciting in potential as we thought, but also the most challenging of our dry pea programs. This arena has historically had the least effort in breeding and therefore the greatest room for improvement.

​Our focus here is in green and yellow edible peas. This has required considerable effort in moving spring pea qualities into the winter program while maintaining or re-establishing the winter hardiness needed for this market.

Objectives:

• Winter Hardiness
• Increased Yields
• Root Rot Tolerance
• Improved Seed Quality
• Phoma Tolerance
• Upright Growth Habit

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Green Peas

Keystone

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Yellow Peas

Koyote is a stand up semi-leafless pea with high pod set to help harvestability. It works well as a split yellow pea, but an off colored seed coat makes it less adapted to the whole yellow market. Koyote’s seed size is not as large as traditional spring yellow peas but is closer in size than any other winter variety on the market. Planting rates on Koyote will run around 120 lbs. per acre.  This is partially because of the smaller seed size when compared to spring peas but mostly because of the very strong stooling capability of winter peas.  This means that planting less seeds per acre than spring peas can still produce very adequate stands. 

Whistler is the first pea of its kind in the Pacific Northwest. Whistler is a semi-leafless stand up winter pea with white flowers and yellow cotyledon. Due to its greenish yellow seed coat, Whistler is aimed at the feed market as a protein source

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