Investment

Chickpea is the most important pulse crop in Australian farming systems and the largest in terms of production, cultivated area and export. High temperature is a threat to current and future chickpea production, impacting both yield and grain quality. Chickpea is vulnerable to high temperature during the reproductive phase and late sown chickpea is particularly exposed. To ensure Australian growers can maintain their competitive edge and facilitate future growth, new chickpea varieties with improved genetics for heat tolerance are required.

This national project brings together a multidisciplinary team across agronomy, crop physiology, plant breeding and genetics from major research entities working to advance chickpea production. Field experiments using diverse chickpea germplasm will be conducted across heartland production and expansion regions. Cutting edge approaches in crop modelling, high-throughput phenotyping, genomic prediction, and genetic simulation will be deployed to develop new knowledge, phenomics and genomic prediction tools, and pre-breeding germplasm. Through close partnership with industry this project seeks to fast-track the development of new chickpea varieties that display lower yield loss in response to high temperature. Chickpea growers are anticipated to benefit through continued productivity and quality in current growing regions, greater flexibility in sowing window and potential expansion of production into future growing regions.