Australian mungbean production has expanded three fold in the past four years since the release of the variety Crystal. However average yields remain around 1 t/ha with variability ranging from 0.5 to 2.0 t/ha.
With optimal nutrient and pest management the productivity of dryland crops depends on capture and conversion of available soil moisture and solar radiation into grain. Arrangement of plants in space therefore have a significant effect on the resource capture, crop growth and final yield, particularly for short season crops. There is no such information to support agronomy of new mungbean varieties. This paper explores the scope for optimising resource capture to achieve seasonal potential yield of mungbean cultivar “Crystsal” by manipulating row spacing and plant density configurations in a range of production environments.
Cultivar ‘Crystal’ was grown in factorial combinations of three plant populations and two row-spacing (conventional (wide) and narrow) configurations in four environments. The seasonal cumulative evapotranspiration (ET) varied from 100 to 300mm suggesting a range of water demand across the test environments. The rate of total dry matter production in the narrow rows was at 34kg/ha/mm in contrast to 23 kg/ha/mm in conventional wide row spacing. Grain yield ranged from 0.7 to 2.5 t/ha.
Plant population effect was not significant, narrow rows produced up to 35% higher yields than wide rows in 3 of the 4 environments. Yield advantage from narrow rows was least in driest environments and increased as the water availability increased.
Water use efficiency ranged from 5 to 10 kg/mm across environments. Crops in narrow row spacing produced up to 2 kg more grain per mm than those in wide row spacing. There is need to reconfirm the results in a wider range of environments and with new release varieties.