You wouldn’t think twice about livestock breeders – of cattle, sheep, even chooks – saying they look for “good mothers”. But a lucerne breeder?

True.  New South Wales Department of Primary Industries (NSWDPI) Tamworth lucerne breeder Rex Williams says identifying “good mothers” is one of the keys to progress towards the development of new lucerne varieties for dryland situations.

Dr Williams says that, lucerne being an open pollinated plant, there’s no way of identifying the “fathers” of any potential new line of the legume. 

“So, to improve the population,  we need to select the best individual progeny from the best mothers, and we need to get rid of any plants that draw the overall population down,” Dr Williams says.

“We have to test to see whether we have good or bad mothers. You can tell by the look of some plants, but others are disguised. Often you can only tell how good or bad they are by the performance of their progeny.

“We do a lot of testing in the greenhouse – particularly for resistances to pests and diseases – but growth in the greenhouse doesn’t necessarily translate to improved performance in the paddock.”

Dr Williams says concern about rising water tables and the widening acceptance of the need for ley and phase legumes in grain farm rotations have increased industry interest in lucerne in northern NSW and Queensland. 

But growers in the northern region want lucerne varieties adapted to the often difficult, dryland environment. These lucernes must be persistent, able to recover quickly after grazing, resistant to pests and diseases and still be high yielding, with strong nitrogen fixation ability.  

That’s a tall order, being addressed by Dr Williams in the five-year, Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) supported project “Breeding improved lucernes for cropping systems in eastern Australia”.

Led by NSWDPI, the project also involves Queensland’s Department of Primary Industries and the SeedMark consortium, which is responsible for the commercialisation of new varieties bred by Dr Williams.

Dr Williams’ breeding program includes trials of lucerne lines and cultivars at 15 dryland sites across NSW and southern Queensland. All varieties at all sites are evaluated for forage production, stand density and other key traits.

“Often what breeders do with lucerne varieties in the United States or Europe is not relevant in Australia,” Dr  Williams says.

“ Here we graze lucerne with sheep, which most overseas growers don’t do, and a lot of our lucerne – possibly as much as 90 per cent – is grown dryland and not irrigated.

“Because a lot of farmers are looking to lucerne for its value as a deep-rooted, nitrogen-fixing crop in rotation with grain, our program has a strong emphasis on breeding varieties that will produce good results in two or three years but still be worthwhile for four or five years

“We believe that lucerne rotations are the key to sustainable grain production. Our aim is to breed better lucernes, to be used in better ways, by more farmers across the cropping zone.”