Key points

• GRDC and NSW DPI have partnered in Chickpea Breeding Australia (CBA) to speed up rates of progress in the productivity and reliability of chickpea and expand production areas
• CBA is collaborating with pre-breeders and agronomists, as well as the full variety delivery pipeline to achieve these ambitious goals
• Western Australian grain growers are a key target for CBA and its collaborators.
• Its first new variety release, CBA Captain , is an important initial step for CBA that is already gaining ground in WA

There is an old adage that it takes a village to raise a child – and this approach is being employed to grow the chickpea industry in WA.

Chickpea consumption is on an upwards trajectory. Anticipated increases in Mediterranean, Indian and Middle Eastern demand, as well as emerging new markets for plant-based protein in Western diets, mean chickpea has been flagged as a pulse with a promising future.

This future, together with many grain growers needing greater diversity in their farming systems and more biological sources of nitrogen, were drivers behind the creation of Chickpea Breeding Australia (CBA). CBA is a five-year $30 million partnership between GRDC and the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries (DPI), which began in October 2020.

CBA has a key focus to support Western Australian grain growers to increase chickpea production. In WA, CBA is leveraging exciting progress in a number of chickpea focused research, development and extension projects. Taking the ‘village’ approach is key to CBA’s delivery of improved chickpea varieties.

Dr Kristy Hobson, CBA’s senior chickpea breeder, says CBA has a bold plan to expand the breeding program’s scale approximately tenfold.

“Success will hinge upon accessing and integrating the best breeding technologies such as genomics and high-throughput phenotyping, as well as the latest in experimental design and data analytics,” she says.

The early stages of CBA’s national chickpea expansion strategy were thwarted by COVID-19 lockdowns, particularly barring visits to WA. Once the border restrictions lifted, CBA acted swiftly and September saw the second visit in 2022 by key CBA staff on a comprehensive visit with WA collaborators.

The CBA team visiting WA comprised Dr Francis Ogbonnaya and Dr Juan Juttner from GRDC; Dr Alison Bowman, Dr Guy McMullen, Dr Nicole Rice, Dr Kristy Hobson, Dr Ahsan Asif, Elizabeth Bell and Glenn Lendon all from NSW DPI; and independent CBA management committee member Dr Steve Jefferies.

The trip was coordinated by CBA operations manager Glenn Lendon.

“Regular visits to WA such as this are critical for CBA to meet with our collaborators, and to engage with WA-based researchers, growers and pulse industry experts to ensure that we are on track to delivering improved chickpea varieties for WA grain growers,” Mr Lendon says.

Dedicated breeding for WA

Dr Hobson says knowledge about the WA environment and farming systems is imperative to achieving CBA’s aims. It is also vital that selection for new chickpea varieties for WA grain growers is undertaken in WA and embedded within WA’s unique farming systems.

“To ensure new chickpea varieties are well-adapted to WA conditions, CBA has established six major chickpea evaluation and selection sites in WA. We are substantially increasing the number of potential new varieties for WA. CBA’s evaluation footprint extends the entire WA wheatbelt, from Scaddan in the south-east to Northampton in the north-west,” Dr Hobson says.

CBA is focusing on high-yielding, disease-resistant, low-risk chickpea varieties with improved harvestability. Disease resistance, in particular Ascochyta blight resistance are a critical component to minimising the risk of growing chickpeas.

“Innovations in breeding technologies are moving fast and it’s these innovations that can assist CBA in making the step change in chickpea’s adaptation necessary for success in WA. Collaboration with the research community is critical to capturing the maximum value from new innovation in breeding technologies.”

Key traits for WA

Key traits that CBA are incorporating into chickpeas for WA grain growers are tolerance to aluminium and cold temperatures during flowering (chilling tolerance), together with tools to assist in managing WA weeds (herbicide tolerance) and resistance to important diseases, particularly Ascochyta blight.

Dr Ahsan Asif inspecting breeding plots at Mingenew. Photo: CBA

“While inspecting breeding trial sites at Dalwallinu, Mingenew, Cunderdin, Northampton and Merredin during the trip, the CBA breeding team was excited to see the promise and diversity in adaption within the CBA breeding material.

"The chickpea breeding lines assessed at these sites are progeny from crosses made specifically for WA grain growers,” Dr Hobson says.

CBA Captain is the first desi chickpea released by CBA with improved adaptation to WA environments. It has a significant yield advantage over the most commonly grown variety, Genesis™ 836, while maintaining harvestability attributes sought by growers – that is, erect plant architecture and pods set high enough up the main stem to enable efficient harvest.”

While it is early days for chickpeas in WA, Mr Lendon says CBA is happy with the uptake of CBA Captain so far.

“In 2022, 60.3 tonnes of CBA Captain were sold to 17 WA growers, located between Mingenew and Esperance and east to Merredin. This follows on from 17.4 tonnes sold in 2021,” he says.

“Given this modest start, 20-times increase in demand could be achieved in five years.”

The next release for WA grain growers is a variety with similar plant type to CBA Captain but with improved resistance to Ascochyta blight. Also in the pipeline for WA is a CBA Captain -related line with added herbicide tolerance developed in a South Australian Research and Development Institute and GRDC project.

Science partners

The CBA breeding team met with key research collaborators involved in GRDC chickpea pre-breeding investments.

Work underway at the Centre for Crop and Disease Management (CCDM) at Curtin University and CSIRO is taking a two-pronged approach to Ascochyta blight resistance.

Ascochyta blight is the most important fungal disease of chickpeas nationally and it crippled the fledgling WA chickpea industry in the late 1990s.

CCDM’s Dr Robert Lee is investigating the Ascochyta fungus genome, while concurrently Dr Lars Kamphuis of CSIRO is incorporating new sources of resistance from a south-eastern Turkey wild Cicer (the wild relative of chickpeas) collection into adapted elite Australian germplasm, as well as developing selection tools to facilitate routine deployment in breeding.

Elizabeth Bell (right), Dr Kristy Hobson, Dr Robert Lee and Dr Lars Kamphuis (the latter two both from the Centre for Crop and Disease Management) inspecting a new field system for assessing Ascochyta Blight resistance in chickpea at Dale. Photo: CBA

The CBA team visited a Department of Primary Industry and Regional Development field experiment at Dale and the CCDM facilities at Curtin University. The team was updated on progress CCDM has made studying different WA Ascochyta isolates, screening CBA lines for resistance to new, aggressive Ascochyta isolates, and identifying new sources of resistance from wild chickpea material.

Improving chilling tolerance of chickpeas is the task of Dr Jens Berger’s team at CSIRO together with DPIRD, using the same wild chickpea material. Greater chilling tolerance has been discovered and the team is now examining its genetic control to assist in breeding varieties with much-improved adaptation in WA.

At CSIRO, the CBA team viewed controlled-environment screening facilities and glasshouses. The CSIRO team is using these facilities to identify chilling-tolerant progeny from crosses between wild and domesticated chickpeas. The progeny is assessed under different temperate regimes, simulating field cold conditions, to understand the physiology of cold tolerance and identify new tolerance sources.

The CBA team also visited DPIRD’s field chilling screening site at Dale and was impressed with the number of interspecific crosses with potential cold tolerance being assessed, particularly given the difficulty in accurately assessing this trait in the field.

Elizabeth Bell and Dr Jens Berger with a chickpea plant that has been assessed under controlled conditions for chilling tolerance Photo: CBA

Acid soils, both surface and subsoils, cover almost half of the arable land of Australia, so breeding more acid soil-tolerant chickpeas will enable chickpea production to expand, particularly in WA. Dr Chengdao Li at Murdoch University/DPIRD is building on outcomes of previous acid soil tolerance research led by Dr Wendy Vance, where she developed screening methods for chickpea tolerance to aluminium and manganese toxicity.

The CBA team met with Dr Li at Northam where a set of 1000 diverse chickpea (domestic and interspecific derived lines from crossing involving wild species) are being multiplied. This material will be screened for aluminium tolerance over the next year. The aim of this research is to identify improved acid soil tolerance, gain a greater understanding of the genetic control of this improved tolerance, and develop breeding tools.

“Developing a strong relationship between Dr Li’s research and CBA will facilitate a rapid uptake of these pre-breeding outputs and accelerate delivery of improved varieties for growers,” Dr Hobson says.

Value-chain partners

Building a sustainable chickpea industry in WA is contingent on continual investment and commitment to the entire pipeline including, most importantly, growers. To this end, CBA met with grain growers at the Mingenew Irwin Group (MIG) Field Day.

CBA team members engaged with four groups of growers at the chickpea National Variety Trial (NVT) site, which is located at the MIG field day site. Disease resistance, harvestability and marketing were all points of interest raised by the growers.

Dr Kristy Hobson addresses a grower group at the chickpea National Variety Trial site at Mingenew Irwin Field Day, WA. Photo: CBA

Chickpeas are well-serviced by the NVT in WA, with a large number of trials relative to their current state production level. CBA inspected the NVT trial sites at Dalwallinu and Mingenew during the tour.

Independent comparative information of commercially available chickpea varieties, including yield and disease resistance ratings, is available for growers to make informed chickpea variety selections via GRDC’s NVT website.

“Improved varieties are just one piece of the puzzle. Applying new local agronomic and disease management practices that have been proven in the WA environment will be essential to building grower confidence and underpin a successful expansion of chickpea in WA,” Dr Hobson says.

Seed companies undertake bulk up and commercialisation of new varieties and are vital to the delivery pipeline. CBA has six seed partners across Australia with two based in WA; Australian Seed & Grain (ASG) and Eastern Districts Seed Cleaning Co (EDSCO).

Whilst in WA Glenn Lendon visited EDSCO and inspected the 60-hectare CBA Captain (PBR) seed bulk-up crop located at Kellerberrin.

As it is vital to determine prospective demand for pulses, Mr Lendon also visited Jackson Morris of Premium Grain Handlers who store, process and pack pulses into containers for export from Fremantle, seeking export market intelligence, particularly for the major overseas destinations for Australian pulses.

More information: Kristy Hobson, kristy.hobson@dpi.nsw.gov.au; Glenn Lendon, glenn.lendon@dpi.nsw.gov.au

Variety performance data for chickpeas in WA is available from NVT Online.