Abstract

Lentil (Lens culinaris ssp. culinaris) is an important food legume crop with global production of almost 7 million tonnes. In Algeria, this crop did not tack a place of interest and the area reserved still reduced. Besides the abundant of biotic and abiotic stresses, this crop suffers substantial yield losses due to the lack of control of farming techniques. Moreover, the relative high production costs constitute another cause for the lessdevelopment of this culture in Algeria. In this context, the main objective of this study was to identify the most appropriate farming techniques of lentil crop in Algerian conditions. Since cereals are the main crop, we tested the effect of soft wheat and durum wheat; used as previous crop; on the development of Lent crop. Our results showed that grain yield rarely exceeded 1500 kg/ha, and that soft wheat is the best preceding crop compared to durum wheat. Moreover, the variety of lens Syria 229 had the best grain yield compared to Balkan and Metropolis. However, Metropolis variety had a higher yield in straw. Also, our investigations revealed that the production costs of 60.000, 00 DZD/ha was very high and the low yield did not make a significant profit.