The Australian Mungbean Association joined forces with QUT and the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF) on new research that aims to stop a plant bacteria seasonally affecting significant percentages of our mungbean crop each year. 

Mungbean (Vigna radiata), is established as the key rotation in tropical Australia’s cereal-based cropping systems. It has a short duration, wide sowing window, a range of rotation benefits and is established as a high-value product for discerning international markets.

New varieties released by the National Mungbean Improvement Program have doubled production to 70,000 tonnes since 2003. Further industry growth, expansion into new tropical production environments, and progress towards a new industry target of 170,000 tonnes annual production requires the adoption of new breeding technologies and an understanding of traits and the physiological processes determining yield and response to abiotic and biotic stress.

This project is delivering new genetic knowledge that will directly assist the breeding of better mungbean varieties for Australian growers. The NAM framework will be used to introduce genetic diversity including abiotic/biotic resistance and new adaptive traits into elite mungbean germplasm using bi-parental and backcross breeding.  Five hundred and sixty mung bean, black gram and wild accessions have been genotyped as part of a genetic diversity study completed on cultivated and wild Australian germplasm.

Thirty crosses have been made to Crystal forming the NAM population, including four interspecific crosses to Vigna var. sublobata. For each population, sixty, F2 derived recombinant inbreed were fast tracked to the F5 generation using controlled environment and field increases.  This population is a global resource and will aid in the study of complex traits such as drought and heat stress at flowering as well as disease resistance.

The data would be of most interest to plant breeders, distributors, growers, agronomists and domestic and international exporters and researchers both in Australia and globally.