Bluetime is a very high yielding green pea from LSPB (LS Plant Breeding Ltd) that adds good marketability of the resulting crop to robust agronomy, featuring high Downy mildew resistance and good standing power.
“For pea growers, our current varieties bring an array of strong field characters to improved yields,” comments Chris Guest, Managing Director of LSPB. “This can reassure those who have been wary of combining peas because of concerns about issues like standing ability or ease of harvest.
“To complement these agronomy pluses for growers, it is important for varieties to produce consistent, good samples to give maximum contract values and marketability to end users.”
Justin Barrett, who is the pulse trader at leading pulse specialists Askew & Barrett, commented on the positive results from LSPB’s Bluetime green pea last season.
“In a year in which the early harvest samples of green peas were noticeably better than usual, the quality of samples received soon deteriorated once the rain came, but Bluetime continued to more than hold its own with regards to size, colour retention and cooking performance.
“With colour retention greatly affected by geographical weather patterns, Bluetime has generally held its colour well, and we have seen some nice examples of the variety from 2021 harvest.
“The good colour has meant that samples have achieved maximum contract values, and along with the good seed size and cooking performance, many open market samples are also finding their way in to export human consumption markets.”
Chris Guest adds, “In addition to Bluetime, LSPB offers growers a wide choice of green pea varieties on the PGRO descriptive list (DL) to suit different farm conditions and rotations.
“Our DL varieties Bluetime, Stroma, Blueman and Greenwich each bring one or more positive agronomic characters – such as high thousand seed weight, high Downy mildew resistance, high resistance to Powdery mildew and good standing power.
“In addition, our yellow pea, Orchestra, has the highest thousand seed weight on the DL with high standing power. While marrowfat pea growers can look to a substantial yield boost over older varieties with Akooma, which is the highest yielding marrowfat pea on the DL.
“We have more improved varieties in prospect for spring 2023 sowing – Carrington is the highest yielding pea on the entire PGRO combining pea DL with high standing ability plus good resistance to Downy mildew.”
