New funding for plant biotechnology

Murdoch researchers have secured another boost to plant disease research, focusing on the genes of barrel medic, a legume species commonly used in Australian pastures for sheep grazing.

The Grains Research and Development Corporation awarded $2.6 million over five years to Professor Richard Oliver from Murdoch University and Dr Karam Singh from CSIRO Plant Industry.

"We will be building on a great Australian resource ? a collection of about 2500 barrel medic varieties that have been collected in Adelaide over the past one hundred years," said Professor Richard Oliver.

"This legume has been adopted recently by the plant science community as a model plant for research.

"In particular, it is useful to study because of the genetic resources ? mutations, genetic markers, DNA sequences, varieties - that have been gathered and because it interacts with nitrogen-fixing rhizobia and many pathogenic fungi."

Professor Oliver is the Director of the Australian Centre for Necrotrophic Fungal Pathogens, and aims to identify how barrel medic resists diseases that threaten many crop species.

"This ancient store of genetic material has a lot of natural variation, so we will look for genes that we can characterise to confer resistance to other legume crops," he said.

"We collaborate closely with other researchers in Australian, US and Europe who are focusing on other genomic aspects of barrel medic."

Professor Oliver and his colleagues at the State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre are hosting a meeting of the world's leading barrel medic researchers in November to draw together all aspects of research on this new model plant.

The research from the five-year project will use a plant growth facility that is about to be constructed at Murdoch and the University of WA with funds from the Australian Research Council.