  The decays of non-strange positive parity excited baryons via emission of a
pseudo-scalar meson are studied in the framework of the 1/Nc expansion to order
1/Nc. In particular, the pionic decays of the l=0 Roper baryons and of the l=2
baryons in the mass interval 1680-1950 MeV are analyzed using the available
partial decay widths. Decay widths by emission of an eta meson are shown to be
suppressed by a factor 1/Nc^2 with respect to the pionic ones.
