The Australian Grains Genebank imports pulse germplasm for use by breeders and researchers. The two main bottlenecks in accessing and distributing new germplasm are the post-entry quarantine program, designed to minimise risk of new diseases entering Australia, and the need to obtain plant genetic information. Methodologies are now available to identify pathogens and traits of interest in germplasm using next Generation Sequencing (NGS).

This investment will develop a streamlined process using NGS, and sophisticated computer bioinformatics to enable screening for relevant pathogens and generating plant host genetic information from the total sequence data generated.