Chickpea is one of Australia’s most rapidly expanding crops, becoming increasingly valuable to the grains industry and providing rotational benefits to the farming system. Most expansion of chickpea has been in the relatively warm areas of northern New South Wales and southern Queensland. Improved chilling tolerance at flowering is required to better adapt the crop to cooler southern and western regions, and to stabilise yields in northern regions experiencing radiation frosts. Chilling stress at flowering disrupts fertilisation and pod set of chickpea, delaying the reproductive phase, exposing it to greater heat and drought stress which decreases yield while increasing risk.

There is very little chilling tolerance in the primary genepool of domesticated chickpea, while its close wild relatives showed some promise. Recent collection of these wild species has uncovered a broad, previously unavailable genetic diversity which this project will exploit to improve chilling tolerance of domestic chickpea by focusing on the following steps. Ultimately this work aims to improve the chilling tolerance of Australian cultivars by crossing with tolerant wild relatives. Use of genomic technology will ensure that tolerance genes are maintained and amplified in the breeding process.