Australian chickpea industry not dead: may have a pulse after all

New research could help the Australian chickpea industry bounce back following its devastation by a fungal disease in 1999. Researchers at the University of Western Australia (UWA) have developed two new chickpea varieties that they say will “take the Indian market by storm”.

The Ambar and Neelam chickpeas were commercially released in early September at the Mingenew-Irwin Group field day. A type of desi chickpea, which is small and high in fibre, the new varieties have taken their names from the Hindi words for “amber” and “blue sapphire” respectively.

The WA chickpea industry grew to a 70,000 hectare grain legume crop in the mid-1990s before being destroyed by the fungal disease ascochyta blight. In 2005, UWA formed an alliance with the Department of Agriculture and Food WA (DAFWA), the Council of Grain Growers Organisation (COGGO) and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). The alliance aimed to develop varieties that would not only be resistant to ascochyta blight, but would also be high yielding and good quality.

The new varieties were developed by Professor Tanveer Khan from UWA’s Centre for Legumes in Mediterranean Agriculture and the UWA Institute of Agriculture and Hackett Professor Kadambot Siddique, also from UWA’s Institute of Agriculture.

The researchers have confirmed the chickpeas’ resistance to the ascochyta blight in other parts of Australia and in India. The positive results of these tests mean the chickpeas will require little or no fungicide during production, significantly cutting costs.

“These two new ascochyta-resistant varieties should play a pivotal role in rejuvenating the chickpea industry,” Professor Siddique said.