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Know Your Breeders? Part 2
Occupation: Lucerne Breeder
Alan Humphries
Employer: SARDI
Varieties Bred: SARDI Five and SARDI Ten (as junior member in team), and SARDI Grazer and SARDI Seven replacement as head breeder (coming out). Also involved in breeding other perennial pastures: Sulla, Red Clover, Cullen (a native legume) and Saltbush.
Do you still believe some of the older public varieties still have a place in Australian & Overseas markets?
The varieties are falling down because they have run their race in terms of being able to deliver good quality seed to farmers for production. For example, less than 100t of Hunterfield is now available each year, and as the organization responsible for its maintenance, SARDI is unable to renew the variety (you can only produce so many generations of seed from the basic seed lots).
Having said this, Siriver is still the most widely grown lucerne for export sales to the Middle East as competitively priced ‘lucerne seed’, so there is obviously a working export industry for this product. However it performs poorly as a lucerne variety for Australian conditions.
I can understand that some farmers want to keep growing trusted varieties like Hunterfield and Aurora, particularly as some imported varieties with big wraps perform poorly in Australia. Hunterfield is now 25 years old, its natural life is coming to an end, and we have made big improvements in the last 25 years (disease resistance, winter activity, quality and grazing tolerance).
Are any of the Public varieties used in the screening process of the new improved varieties?
We always include public varieties as checks in our field and glasshouse screening. Some varieties are used as checks so that when they die we know the experiment has worked (i.e. Hunter River for SAA and Hunterfield for Phytophthora root rot).
We find it increasingly difficult to get even reasonable quality seed of public varieties. I think it is because there isn’t a company that has its reputation on the line for the quality of the product. This is probably the main reason why I wouldn’t sow a public variety as a farmer.
For the most part, we have been selecting out public varieties for the last 25 years, so it’s very rare that we do so now. Our breeding program represents somewhere around 5 generations of selection from Hunterfield. We have in the recent past, selected 40 year old Hunter River plants for breeding – but incorporating aphid resistance means going back to square 1.
Without giving away any trade secrets, are there any new & exciting developments on the horizon in the world of lucerne breeding?
We have two major traits in lucerne breeding that we hope to deliver to our commercial partner in the next 2 years. The one I can talk about is tolerance to acidic soils, where we are selecting plants that will grow in pHCa 4.5 with moderate aluminium. We estimate that 50% of lucerne grown in Australia is grown on soils that are moderately acidic (less than pHCa 5.5) that would benefit from improved tolerance to these conditions. The rhizobia are also sensitive to acidic soils, and collaborative research with the Future Farm Industries CRC will result in a matching strain release by 2011.
Thanks to Jamie Tidy for this second instalment of our get to know your lucerne breeders articles! Another instalment from Alan next week!
Do you still believe some of the older public varieties still have a place in Australian & Overseas markets?
The varieties are falling down because they have run their race in terms of being able to deliver good quality seed to farmers for production. For example, less than 100t of Hunterfield is now available each year, and as the organization responsible for its maintenance, SARDI is unable to renew the variety (you can only produce so many generations of seed from the basic seed lots).
Having said this, Siriver is still the most widely grown lucerne for export sales to the Middle East as competitively priced ‘lucerne seed’, so there is obviously a working export industry for this product. However it performs poorly as a lucerne variety for Australian conditions.
I can understand that some farmers want to keep growing trusted varieties like Hunterfield and Aurora, particularly as some imported varieties with big wraps perform poorly in Australia. Hunterfield is now 25 years old, its natural life is coming to an end, and we have made big improvements in the last 25 years (disease resistance, winter activity, quality and grazing tolerance).
Are any of the Public varieties used in the screening process of the new improved varieties?
We always include public varieties as checks in our field and glasshouse screening. Some varieties are used as checks so that when they die we know the experiment has worked (i.e. Hunter River for SAA and Hunterfield for Phytophthora root rot).
We find it increasingly difficult to get even reasonable quality seed of public varieties. I think it is because there isn’t a company that has its reputation on the line for the quality of the product. This is probably the main reason why I wouldn’t sow a public variety as a farmer.
For the most part, we have been selecting out public varieties for the last 25 years, so it’s very rare that we do so now. Our breeding program represents somewhere around 5 generations of selection from Hunterfield. We have in the recent past, selected 40 year old Hunter River plants for breeding – but incorporating aphid resistance means going back to square 1.
Without giving away any trade secrets, are there any new & exciting developments on the horizon in the world of lucerne breeding?
We have two major traits in lucerne breeding that we hope to deliver to our commercial partner in the next 2 years. The one I can talk about is tolerance to acidic soils, where we are selecting plants that will grow in pHCa 4.5 with moderate aluminium. We estimate that 50% of lucerne grown in Australia is grown on soils that are moderately acidic (less than pHCa 5.5) that would benefit from improved tolerance to these conditions. The rhizobia are also sensitive to acidic soils, and collaborative research with the Future Farm Industries CRC will result in a matching strain release by 2011.
Thanks to Jamie Tidy for this second instalment of our get to know your lucerne breeders articles! Another instalment from Alan next week!
