Oat development in Australia has historically ridden on the coat-tails of wheat and barley, but the cereal has now been taken into the fold of established cereal breeder InterGrain.

The new venture is backed by a joint $5.4 million investment from GRDC and AgriFutures Australia over five years. InterGrain will continue to focus on oats for grain and hay, with an increased emphasis on the needs of developing health markets while harnessing new technologies to deliver improved genetic gain per dollar.

Dr Allan Rattey has taken the reins of the oat program within the InterGrain cereal breeding portfolio. InterGrain will build on the success and stability of the long-term, publicly funded breeding program led by the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) and capitalise on innovations for Australian growers’ benefit.

“We have been very fortunate to have a seamless transition from the public national program for oats into the InterGrain stable,” Dr Rattey says.

“The sharing of knowledge, together with germplasm, from the public program by Dr Pamela Zwer, Sue Hoppo and Peter McCormack from SARDI, together with the formative oat development work by Dr Robyn McLean, Blakely Paynter and Georgie Troup with the WA Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) has provided an excellent starting point for the InterGrain oat breeding program.”

Dr Rattey has previously worked as a wheat breeder and pre-breeder and will be leveraging these years of experience together with InterGrain’s resources for the oat program’s advantage.

“At the same time as InterGrain ventured into oat improvement, the WA State Government established the $10.2 million Processed Oat Partnership to run for five years being led by DPIRD. Together these two initiatives stand to provide a significant leg-up for the Australian oat industry.”

Scale

Oat improvement is set to benefit from many aspects of being part of the InterGrain stable.

“Plant breeding combines many research skills, and the increased scale via testing more targeted genotypes across more environments possible at InterGrain will help drive our selection of improved varieties,” Dr Rattey says.

We’ve expanded the footprint of oat development for Australia by more than doubling the previous public program’s number of plots and sites, taking more oat genotypes to more environments.

Each year InterGrain runs wheat, barley and oat trials at 63 sites across diverse Australian environments consisting of more than 300,000 plots. This scale helps efficiency of labour and equipment and enables the InterGrain oat program to leverage off these greater resources in wheat and barley for a much larger oat program than previously possible.

“We are always looking for ways to improve the efficiency of our trial programs, such as an automated seed packer that speeds up seed packing six to eight-fold, as an integral part of this.”

New technologies

InterGrain is at the forefront of developing and accessing new technologies that drive efficiencies in its wheat and barley improvement programs, and oats stand to leverage off these developments.

“We have a long-standing relationship with Agriculture Victoria research to develop genomic platforms to increase our genetic selection gains,” Dr Rattey says.

“This technology has developed to the point that it costs less to genotype new lines and identify improved ones than it does in field testing. We are also using high-throughput phenomic systems that involve the use of drones mounted with different various sensors to assess field-based traits such as biomass for hay and canopy temperature for variety characterisation.

By interrogating images with appropriate, automated feature extraction algorithms, we can better match new varieties to environments using this technology and fast-forward oaten hay breeding.

InterGrain is also exploring the potential of proteomics to inform the selection of grain quality aspects to target growing health markets that will specifically inform oat quality improvement and healthier new products.

Collaboration

To ensure access to new technologies and to develop further beneficial collaborations, InterGrain employs a dedicated research and business development manager, Dr Dini Ganesalingam. Her role is to develop research collaborations to enable maximum scientific impact of InterGrain’s cereal breeding programs, and oat improvement will gain from these collaborations too.

Dr Dini Ganesalingam is building key collaborative links for InterGrain’s oat breeding program. Photo: Dr Sue Knights

These collaborative linkages access the latest research and technologies including new breeding technologies, genomic selection, biometrics, physiology and plant pathology – adding greater precision and efficiency to the oat breeding pipeline.

For example, collaborative links have been established with Professor Chengdao Li at Murdoch University, who is leading genetic research in decoding the oat genome for Australia as part of the international oat pangenome effort (PanOat). The fully characterised oat pangenome will provide significant breeding gains.

Knowledge about the adaptation of oats to the Australian environment is being informed by Dr Ben Trevaskis’ (CSIRO) team that will also identify better-adapted oat germplasm and genetic markers that underpin flowering time.

Significant oat disease knowledge and molecular tools will be provided for oat crown rust (Puccinia coronata) by collaborations with Professor Robert Park’s team at the University of Sydney and Dr Melania Figueroa’s team at CSIRO. For Septoria leaf blotch (Septoria avenae), there is a close collaboration with Dr Judith Atieno and Dr Tara Garrard at SARDI.

Further collaborations will be sourced by InterGrain to benefit oat improvement as the program progresses.

Commercialisation pipeline

“One key advantage that InterGrain can provide for oats is our proven commercialisation pathway,” Dr Rattey says.

“With established irrigation facilities and the ability to fast-track the bulking-up of new varieties, together with state-of-the-art breeding tools, we can cut the breeding and commercial release time for a new variety to eight or nine years from 13 to 15 years.”

Together with dedicated commercial staff covering regions and promoting InterGrain cereal varieties, this is a significant means to respond to growers’ needs for new varieties. These staff can, in turn, report on new oat trait requirements of growers to the breeders.

Growers can access the latest independent performance data on oat varieties adapted to their environment via GRDC’s National Variety Testing program, with which InterGrain has a close working relationship.

“Working with NVT, we ensure that aspects of agronomy, such as sowing dates for oats, are relevant for growers in different regions,” Dr Rattey says.

Innovation and new products

“InterGrain is always seeking novel technology to release market-leading varieties that benefit the Australian grain industry. In partnership with Grains Innovation Australia and Nufarm, we’ve released to Australian growers the world-first imidazoline-tolerant varieties. These oaten hay varieties, Kingbale in 2021 and Archer in 2022, are suitable with IBS Sentry application to target more weeds in hay crops.”

Dr Rattey says goodwill and a seamless transition from the public oat breeding program to InterGrain meant there was very little disruption to the oat release pipeline.

“Two new hay varieties – Wallaby and Kultarr – were released in 2022. with more than 60 tonnes of grain being distributed by InterGrain’s marketing team in conjunction with AEXCO to targeted growers for demonstration trials and seed bulk-up by growers and seed sheds for increased 2023 planting. In addition, InterGrain is fast-tracking the release of a grain variety from material that was underway within the public program.”

More information: Dr Allan Rattey, arattey@InterGrain.com, 08 9419 8000