lentils, a high protien pulse, "lens culinarus"; family; leguminosae; native to Africa and the Mediterranean. There are hundreds of varieties and landraces of lentils as it is probably the oldest and most widespread pulse crop used for both food and fodder. It is very widely adapted to a very large range of environments and climates. The seed is a small lens shaped seed between 3 and 8 mms in size and seed coat colour ranges between red, orange, grey, speckled to green depending on the variety. Seed pods contain two seeds per pod or only one seed when conditions get tough. Most lentils are consumed where they are produced. Although not the largest lentil producer, Canada is the world's largest exporter of Green lentils and now producing and exporting Red lentils as well. Since the mid 1990's, Australia has become a significant producer and exporter of Red lentils. The USA also produce small tonnages of lentils from the Pacific North West as well I think. Plants are a small bushy plant that are often naturally prostrate as lentils are generally hand harvested. Varieties have been selected and bred by the international ICRASAT and ICARDA pulse breeding centres for upright growth habit for machine harvesting. Some of these earlier varieties will substantially lodge when ripe. Plant height ranges from about 8" high during very dry years to about knee height in very good years. Its been a while since we have seen those nice high crops around here due to ongoing dry and drought over the last ten years. Yields in Australia range from the best at around 4 tonnes _ Ha to .75 or less tonnes _ Ha in dry years, Average is around the 2.5 tonnes _ Ha. Flex headers are an absolute must for lentil harvesting. Most grub damage is caused by the lucerne [Alfa Alfa to Americans! ] Seed Web Moth, "Etiella behrii" known as plain Etiella plus other unprintable descriptions to lentil growers. The moth is only a few mms long, lays it's eggs on the seed pod, hatches and burows into the pod and consumes or damages the seeds in the pod. Damaged seed then splits very easily when machine harvested. The merchants and consumers don't like the orange coloured seed halves in their sample although the red lentils are usually dehulled and split for human consumption. The green lentils are consumed whole. Your local supermarkets will generally stock lentils and lentil soup mixes as a lot of the alternative life style mob are into lentil and pulse based products. We don't object to this as they seem to be able to pay some bloody good prices for their lentils which we will gratefully accept! Go green, tbran! Eat lentils! Support those poor and destitute Australian and Canadian lentil growers!
First day I know, but very very smooth, in wire weed (hog weed) green lentil vine! if you baled the vine out of rotor and stacked it, you would have a big bale fire! Only low yielding lentils and not that much MOG, but the rotor loss was low on our first run, ROM convinced me to take out the helicals on the cage door and we have most likely, our lowest grain loss out the rotor in lentils we've ever had! Not grinding up no where near as much vine and I think we are getting lower grain splits