Australian Grain Technologies continues to invest in new wheat varieties

AGT General Manager, Marketing and Seed Production; and Manager, South Dan Vater in one of wheat trial plots at "Kabinga", Collingullie

Australian Grain Technologies (AGT) is a leading plant breeding and research organisation and on their property “Kabinga”, Collingullie they are keeping southern wheat growers supplied with the latest varieties: they are also working hard at achieving the same for barley, durum and lupins.

At the recent biennial field day, AGT General Manager, Marketing and Seed Production; and Manager, South Dan Vater bought the assembled grain producers and industry specialists up to date on the latest success with introducing new varieties of wheat suitable for southern Australia.

“We are re-investing into a number of different areas, obviously wheat is our ‘bread and butter’, and we are ramping up our wheat breeding programs, and now have around 250,000 field trail plots across the country,” he said.

“We are looking at different opportunities in wheat and Britt Kalmeier’s program here at Wagga is focusing on winter wheat varieties.

“We have also investing in barley breeding for the past four years and now have around 40,000 trial plots across Australia adding value to the barley breeding space.”

Mr Vader said AGT always had the intention to expand into other crops adding value for grain producers and they have recently taken over a lupin breeding program.

“It is the breeding program initiated by the WA Department of Agriculture and is the only lupin breeding program in the world,” he said.

“It is currently WA focused but we intend to move into breeding varieties for southern NSW.”

Mr Vader noted AGT is aware of opportunities in the canola industry and will be pursuing that line in the future.

“We see openings in the canola breeding space and particularly for varieties suitable for the low to medium rainfall cropping districts,” he said.

“Open-pollinated varieties is what we will initially focus on.”


Paul Telfer was appointed by AGT to head up its barley breeding program three years ago.

“We can access any of the varieties released in Australia and draw on any varieties already in the public domain,” he said.

“It is exciting we are now getting to the pointy end of the program and will have varieties available in a couple of years.”

Mr Telfer said the aim is to have a lot more barley varieties coming out of the AGT breeding program.