Howzat Desi Chickpeas

Has a moderate resistance to ascochyta blight, Phytophthora and Botrytis.

Recommended Planting areas: Northern NSW, QLD, Southern NSW, VIC with strict ascochyta management

HOWZAT out yields most other desi varieties under most normal growing conditions absent of Ascochyta blight. In the presence of Ascochyta blight the variety will out yield others by a significant margin. The variety has good seed quality and an acceptable growth habit.

HOWZAT is recommended for all chickpea sowings where Ascochyta blight has been or is a potential

Yield
HOWZAT has shown to out yield other desi varieties even when the potentially devastating disease Ascochyta blight is undetectable. Trials in NSW and southern Queensland gave the following results under low disease pressure.

HOWZAT’s yield improvement can mean up to $60/ha extra return for the grower even before Ascochyta blight starts reducing yields in the more susceptible varieties. (Using an on farm price of $450/tonne.)

Growth Habit
HOWZAT has an erect growth habit and good harvestability making it very similar to handle as Amethyst. It is medium-early flowering and has good late season growth and podding.

Disease Resistance
Economic Control of Ascochyta blight is essential to securing a profitable chickpea crop. Experience with the disease shows growing resistant varieties is undoubtedly the best strategy to maintain production in the long term. HOWZAT is rated as moderately resistant to Ascochyta blight and is also moderately resistant to both Phytophthora (same as Barwon) and Botrytis Grey mould (same as Jimbour, better than Amethyst).

This combination of disease resistance provides for greater security of yield and greater likelihood of a more profitable crop.

HOWZAT should still be grown using holistic disease management. Seed should be tested and treated with P-Pickle T or Thiram. The crop should be inspected and in crop fungicide sprays are still recommended.

Quality
The grain produced by HOWZAT has good quality attributes; seed is of good size (21g/100 seeds while Amethyst is 14.5g/100 seeds) and colour and it also has reasonable splitting quality. Cooking quality of both whole grain and dhal is reasonable. When taken to test markets HOWZAT seed has shown greater market acceptance than the smaller seed varieties.

HOWZAT has been commercialized by AACT under license from NSW Agriculture and the Grains Research & Development Corporation. HOWZAT was bred and evaluated by Ted Knight of NSW Agriculture with financial assistance of the GRDC. Further evaluation has been done by QDPI, VIDA, SARDI and the Department of Agriculture.