A crop nutrition specialist says now might be the time to re-examine inoculants for edible beans.

Manitoba Agriculture's John Heard spoke last week at edible bean meetings in Altona and Portage. His presentation showed that beans respond quite positively when more nitrogen is applied to the soil, but he also brought up concerns around greenhouse gas emissions.

He says because nitrogen production consumes a lot of natural gas, industrial pressures could arise to persuade farmers into reducing usage.

"The other point is if we have residual nitrogen leftover and if we have nitrogen losses in the form of nitrous oxide, that's a powerful greenhouse gas," he says, "so we're going want to reserve or nitrogen for those crops where we need it most. If there's a chance that inoculant is performing better than in the past, I think that's something really valuable to know."

Heard says it's important to have a back up plan for bean crops if producers become discouraged to use nitrogen due to environmental concerns.