New Australian soybean variety Richmond outperforms traditional varieties, Asgrow A6785 and Soya 791 - Exp 3

To present a summary of data from multi-season replicated evaluations and on-farm experiments of Richmond, a new variety for production in northern New South Wales.The Australian Soybean Breeding Program develops varieties for diverse productionenvironments across a 3000 km range from the Atherton Tablelands in far north Queensland(Latitude 17.2661°S, Longitude 145.4859°E) to the Riverina in southern New South Wales(Latitude 29.7503°S, Longitude 120.5530°E).The program focuses on strategies to broaden the range of adaptation of new cultivars (James& Lawn, 2011), and to complete the transition from traditional dark hilum types that supplylower-value crushing markets to clear hilum types with the grain qualities required for humanconsumption markets. Advances in yield, disease resistance and other agronomic traits are alsotargeted.Primarily, a single seed descent method is used to advance populations to the F4 level ofinbreeding. Varieties from the Australian Soybean Breeding Program are not geneticallymodified (non-GMO). Regional evaluation and selection for environmental adaptationand specific regional traits is carried out across a wide range of environments in the targetproduction regions. Typically, new soybean lines progress through stages of small-scalereplicated evaluations for 6–8 seasons, with processors conducting small-scale grainevaluations. Advanced lines then complete evaluation in replicated on-farm experimentsbefore commercial licensing and release.This paper summarises data from multi-season replicated evaluations and on-farmexperiments of RichmondA, a new variety for production in northern New South Wales.