The Australian Soybean Breeding Program develops varieties for diverse production environments across a 3000 km range from the Atherton Tablelands in far north Queensland (Latitude 17.2661°S, Longitude 145.4859°E) to the Riverina in southern New South Wales (Latitude 29.7503°S, Longitude 120.5530°E).

The program focuses on strategies to broaden the range of adaptation of new cultivars (James & Lawn, 2011), and to complete the transition from traditional dark hilum types that supply lower-value crushing markets to clear hilum types with the grain qualities required for human consumption markets. Advances in yield, disease resistance and other agronomic traits are also targeted.

Primarily, a single seed descent method is used to advance populations to the F4 level of inbreeding. Varieties from the Australian Soybean Breeding Program are not genetically modified (non-GMO). Regional evaluation and selection for environmental adaptation and specific regional traits is carried out across a wide range of environments in the target production regions. Typically, new soybean lines progress through stages of small-scale replicated evaluations for 6–8 seasons, with processors conducting small-scale grain evaluations. Advanced lines then complete evaluation in replicated on-farm experiments before commercial licensing and release.

This paper summarises data from multi-season replicated evaluations and on-farm experiments of RichmondA, a new variety for production in northern New South Wales

• Richmond produced an average yield 7% higher than Soya 791 in advanced variety evaluations at early sowing dates (first week in December) over six seasons.
• Richmond produced an average yield 7.7% higher than Asgrow A6785 in advanced variety evaluations at late sowing dates (mid January) over eight seasons.
• In on-farm experiments, Richmond yielded 16% higher than Soya 791 in a wide-row system on the northern slopes, and 7% higher than Asgrow A6785 in a narrow-row coastal system.
• In addition to higher yield potential, Richmond is tolerant to lodging and pre-harvest weather damage, has clean leaf drop, large seed size and high protein, and is resistant to powdery mildew. This combination of traits provides greater crop security and a full range of market options for growers, and high quality grain for buyers and processors.

Conclusions:

The Australian soybean variety RichmondA produces large grain (22 g/100 seed) with a clear hilum and high levels of protein (42% dry matter), which is suitable for all markets including human consumption and export. The traditional variety, Asgrow A6785, has small grain (<16 g/100 seed) with a brown hilum and protein levels less than 40%, which limits the range of markets to which it is suited. The traditional variety, Soya 791, has average sized grain Agronomy(19 g/100 seed) with a light brown hilum and high levels of protein (42%). Both A6785 and Soya 791 are prone to excessive vegetative growth, especially at an early sowing date. However, this is not necessarily converted into grain yield as demonstrated in the on-farm experiment at Harwood.

RichmondA is superior to A6785 and Soya 791 in terms of grain yield, tolerance to lodging, tolerance to pre-harvest weathering and clean leaf drop. RichmondA offers a summer legume option with high yield and high grain quality for early, mid or late sowing windows in northern New South Wales. The variety’s performance was not adversely affected by the range of soil types and farming systems reported in this paper; it was superior to A6785 and Soya 791 in all situations. RichmondA is resistant to powdery mildew. This package of traits represents a significant advance in soybean varieties for the North Coast, Tablelands, Northern Slopes and Liverpool Plains production regions of northern New South Wales.

The results of the on-farm experiment of RichmondA versus Soya 791 in a wide spacing, single row system at Oakwood demonstrates the variety’s ability to compensate for wide rows and the associated lower plant populations in dryland systems. Row spacing and plant population interactions of new soybean and mungbean varieties are being investigated in the current NSW DPI–GRDC project DAN00171