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• New technologies and biological concepts for pre-breeding resistance to the Ascochyta blight diseases of pea, chickpea, lentil and faba bean

  Research & Development

  

  Date

  30.06.2011

  GRDC Project Code

  CUR00014

• Pulse Breeding Australia: Field Pea Breeding Program.

  Research & Development

  

  Date

  30.06.2011

  GRDC Project Code

  DAV00118

  Region

  National

  Institution

  State Government

  R&D Area

  Breeding/New Varieties

  Pulse Breeding Australia will conduct a world class field pea breeding program that will deliver superior new varieties with increased productivity and profitability for field pea growers and which will expand the crops adaptation range in Australia. To achieve this the focus of breeding will be on improving yield potential, yield reliability and general adaptation, particularly for lower rainfall climates. The program will aim to combine desirable genetic variation that will increase grain yield potential, reduce crop input costs, reduce crop risk and maintain grain market access. The specific focus on trait genetic improvement will be annually reviewed and will cover: 1) Grain yield and adaptation (general and regional): - High yield potential across and within the major production regions for field pea - Yield reliability particularly in low rainfall or short season climates 2) Grain quality - Emphasis on smooth, spherical "Kaspa type" field pea • Light tan-red seed coat • High splitting yield • High hydration capacity • Superior cooking time3) Plant features and suitable agronomy: - Emphasis on the "Kaspa" ideotype which is characterised by: erect and vigorous vegetative plant growth, plant features that improve harvesting efficiency (e.g. lodging resistance, suitable plant height) and reduce harvest losses caused by pod shattering (e.g. sugar pod trait). - Optimal flowering time and flowering duration particularly for lower rainfall climates (e.g. PBA Gunyah) - Regional adapatation for grain yield. 4) Multiple disease resistance / tolerance to: - Blackspot complex - Bacterial blight - Downy mildew - Powdery mildew - Viruses: BLRV, PSbMV5) Abiotic stress tolerance to: - High soil boron and soil salinity - Herbicides - Reproductive frost damage - Drought The program will ensure long-term genetic improvement for growers by undertaking a targeted parent building program for the major abiotic and biotic traits were superior genetic variation has been identified. This will be achieved by utilising germplasm and knowledge from agencies conducting pre-breeding, breeding and molecular marker research on field pea globally.

• Validate and integrate canopy management principles into WA cropping systems

  Research & Development

  

  Date

  31.03.2011

  GRDC Project Code

  FFC00005

  Region

  West

  Institution

  Farming Systems Group

  R&D Area

  Agronomy/Farming Systems

  ConsultAg will undertake a 3 year research project to validate, and if worthy, integrate the principles of canopy management into the Western Australian cropping system.` The aim is to do this across all rainfall zones (high, medium and low), using both major cereal grains grown in WA (wheat and barley).The accepted definition of canopy management is ‘managing the green surface area of the crop canopy in order to optimise profitability’. This primarily involves matching seed rate to time of sowing and nitrogen rate and timing to soil moisture levels, so that the green leaf area, or tiller number (canopy), matches the seasonal conditions. In this way, soil moisture can be conserved to allow efficient grain fill. Managing the canopy also has positive implications for disease pressure and frost risk.The research being undertaken by Nick Poole and Mick Faulkner, which was presented at the GRDC sponsored AAAC Canopy Management Workshop, was a real paradigm shift for WA consultants. ConsultAg have since spent a lot of time discussing this research and how it may fit into farming systems within WA.This approach has a lot to offer the WA grains industry across all rainfall zones. It is expected that canopy management could become an integral tool to help growers manage climate variability, and increase crop water use efficiency. To date in WA, there has been some canopy management work undertaken in the high rainfall zones, but there has been no research done in the medium to low rainfall zones. Through this project canopy management principles will be expanded to include the low to medium rainfall zones and will be carried out on both wheat and barley.Aims:1) To identify the best fit for canopy management in the WA cropping system, especially in the medium and low rainfall zones.2) To validate the canopy management principles developed in South Australia (SA), Victoria (VIC) and New Zealand (NZ), and integrate them into the WA cropping system.3) To help growers use canopy management principles to increase reliability and profitability of cereal production in the WA wheatbelt.4) To monitor how canopy density interacts with crop yield, grain quality, disease levels and frost damage.It is intended that the project focuses on validating and integrating the canopy management principles established for South Australia, Victoria and New Zealand by Nick Poole and Mick Faulkner. Their expertise will be drawn upon to establish whether or not these principles are appropriate for farming systems in WA. This research project will center around large scale farmer sized plot trials, and will have a heavy extension focus, as experience has shown that growers respond better to such trials when undertaken locally, and in collaboration with grower groups.

• Genome sequencing in narrow-leafed lupins

  Research & Development

  

  Date

  01.01.2011

  GRDC Project Code

  UWA00147

  Australian cropping, while highly successful in recent years, faces some significant challenges, one of which is the unsustainable preponderance of cereal crops in the system. This is largely due to a shortage of viable break crops. Legumes are on paper an attractive option as not only do they provide the normal rotation advantages such as disease breaks but they also fix nitrogen, thereby reducing the economic and environmental costs of using industrial fertilisers for their cultivation and for subsequent cereal crops.
  
  The major grain legume grown in Australia is narrow-leafed lupins (NLL), but being a recently domesticated crop it has many agronomic limitations that have led to the dramatic fall of its use over the last few years. Through the genome revolution and next generation sequencing technologies there are new powerful tools available to the modern plant breeder that could rapidly accelerate lupin crop improvement. The scope of this project will be to provide the research and breeding community with extensive information on the NLL genome sequence. We have brought together an experienced and highly credentialed research consortium formed by experts in various disciplines from CSIRO, UWA, WAIMR, Proteomics International and DAFWA. Our consortium is further strengthened by both national and international advisory groups that bring a wealth of additional relevant experience with eukaryotic genome sequencing and legume genomics. Our major focus is to decipher as much of the gene space sequence as possible and to use this valuable sequence information to greatly accelerate marker discovery and identification of candidate genes of interest for lupin crop improvement.
  
  Our approach builds on a strong commitment to NLL crop improvement coupled with substantial genomic resources we have generated such as BAC libraries, genetic maps, Recombinant Inbred Lines (RILs), Espressed Sequence Tags (ESTs) etc. It exploits next-generation sequencing technologies and world class bioinformatic expertise to focus on the gene-rich space of NLL– the area of most relevance and significance to the broad lupin research and breeding community. For this purpose various independent and complementary technologies will be employed to guarantee cost-effective but comprehensive sequence information. We will build on the resources we have already established as part of our current projects (BAC library, genetic maps, large recombinant inbred line populations, more than 4,000 clones of expressed genes etc.) and combine these with the power of next-generation sequencing technologies, proteogenomics and the generation of high density genetic maps to provide an in depth insight into the lupin gene-space sequence, its physical and genetic location and intraspecific sequence variation. This combination of independent techniques is the critical feature of our approach to guarantee achieving high-quality sequence information that will lead to the identification of gene-based markers and gene candidates during the project’s lifetime. Our approach has a heavy emphasis on molecular marker discovery and the development of a dense genetic map to help make the sequence information useful and lead to pre-breeding/breeding outcomes for the grains industry. The cost-effectiveness of our approach will be reflected not only in the provision of high-quality lupin genome sequence information but in the regular release of intermediate outputs to ensure the rapid acceleration of pre-breeding and breeding programs.
  
  Over the last few years there has been a rapidly growing effort to apply powerful plant genomic approaches to key legume species. This explosion of effort offers significant opportunities to help improve various lupin species. Specifically with regards to this project, the sequence information from other legumes will greatly aid in the assembly of syntenic sections and in the annotation of the NLL genome.

• Quantifying the relative contribution of physiological traits contributing to salinity tolerance in barley and wheat

  Research & Development

  

  Date

  01.07.2010

  GRDC Project Code

  UT00022

  Region

  West

  Institution

  University

  R&D Area

  Breeding/New Varieties

• Screening for high yielding cereals in water limited landscapes

  Research & Development

  

  Date

  01.07.2010

  GRDC Project Code

  UWA00143

  Region

  West

  Institution

  University

  Climate change is impacting on farms of the Northern and Eastern Wheatbelt in WA: since the 1950s growing seasons have tended to start later in winter, have adequate moisture during the growing season, and finish earlier in late spring. Salinity affects plant growth through impacts on plant water relations. This project will test the hypothesis that the same traits that cause cereals to be adapted to saline soils will also be important to plant performance in water-limited environments.We will grow a collection of wheat and barley lines at the MEF at Merredin in a water-limited and a non water-limited environment. (These varieties are a subset of the 160 cultivars previously grown on a saltland site near Ballidu in 2009.) We expect that the yields of cultivars in the water-limited environment will be highly correlated with the yields on the saltland site at Ballidu, but the yields in the non water-limited environment will not be correlated with the yields in either the water-limited or the saltland environment.Australia currently has major projects to improve the tolerance of cereals to drought and salinity. Confirmation of our hypothesis would have a major impact on these activities, showing that both goals may be achieved using common selection criteria.

• Development of high salinity tolerant winter cereals germplasm

  Research & Development

  

  Date

  30.06.2010

  GRDC Project Code

  UA00118

  Region

  South, West

  Institution

  University

  R&D Area

  Pre breeding research

  In recognition of the prevalence of salinity stresses in Australian cropping environments, and major economic losses they cause to the Australian farming economy, the Grains Research and Development Corporation has called for tenders for research that will lead to the development of salt-tolerant winter cereal germplasm. Based on the outcomes of a recent National Salinity Workshop, the GRDC highlighted eight key opportunities. The project proposed here will address all of these, through research aimed at understanding the relative importance to grain yield of different mechanisms of salt tolerance and applying this knowledge to develop reliable screening methods in both field and controlled environments. These methods will then be used to identify tolerant germplasm and analyse the genetic control of salt-tolerance traits. The aim is to provide molecular tools that breeders can deploy for selection; and develop parental lines with appropriate trait combinations. This project is designed to identify and characterise environments for realistic phenotyping of salinity tolerance and develop protocols for high-throughput dynamic measurements of salinity tolerance. Genetic stocks characterised for adaptation to salinity stress will be identified and salinity-adapted ideotypes developed, based on an understanding of the effects and interactions of key physiological traits and the relationship between salt stress and osmotic stress. Novel genes or QTLs contributing to salinity tolerance will be identified, and molecular tools permitting selection for those genes will be developed. Finally, parental lines carrying the combinations of identified traits/genes required to achieve the defined salinity-adapted ideotypes will be developed.The project will be national in scope, addressing both the water table-induced salinity that is prevalent in Western Australia and the transient salinity that is of importance throughout Australia. The outputs will benefit the Australian cereal industry by enabling cereal breeders to develop new varieties of bread wheat, durum wheat and barley that will maintain high yields under salt stress.

• Establishing a SNP genomic resource for the Australian wheat industry

  Research & Development

  

  Date

  30.06.2010

  GRDC Project Code

  DAV00103

  Region

  National

  Institution

  State Government

  R&D Area

  Pre breeding research

• Managed Environment Facility : Yanco

  Research & Development

  

  Date

  30.06.2010

  GRDC Project Code

  DAN00137

  Region

  National

  Institution

  State Government

  R&D Area

  Breeding/New Varieties

• Barley Agronomy for the Southern Region 2010-2013

  Research & Development

  

  Date

  28.06.2010

  GRDC Project Code

  DAN00138

  Region

  South, National

  Institution

  State Government

  R&D Area

  Breeding/New Varieties, Variety Evaluation, Agronomy/Farming Systems

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