Lentil lines bred for heat tolerance using phenotyping, genomics, artificial intelligence and speed breeding have reached their first field trials in Australia, in a project funded by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) and led by Agriculture Victoria's Dr Sukhjiwan Kaur.

The aim is to make lentils more resilient as temperatures rise and to widen the area where they can be grown. "There are significant economic gains to be made if we can produce heat-tolerant varieties," Kaur said. After five years of work, about 200 lines are being validated at Horsham and Mildura in Victoria, Narrabri in New South Wales and Merredin in Western Australia, and another 50 at hotter satellite sites in South Australia, Western Australia and Emerald in Queensland.

The work began in 2022 with more than 500 lines, including material from the Australian Grains Genebank, tested in time-of-sowing trials. The best were screened in climate-controlled chambers that simulate a three-day heatwave at the Horsham SmartFarm. Researchers looked for plants that tolerate heat, keeping pods and reproductive organs, rather than escaping it by flowering early.

Genomic analysis by Dr Irene van den Berg links genetic markers to yield and tolerance traits and predicts flowering time in untested environments, so breeders can choose locally adapted lines without trialling them. An AI-driven parent-building pipeline simulates all possible crosses to speed up the process.

Selected lines then pass through speed breeding managed by Dr Shahin Yazdifar, who controls temperature, light and nutrition to bring on flowering and uses embryo rescue to recover offspring from difficult crosses. The researchers want to combine the stability of some low-yielding lines under heat with higher yield potential.

Source: AgroPages