Scientists tackle rusty plant threat

A Totally Wild legend, a leading parenting expert and a pioneer in Queensland’s community sector are among The University of Queensland’s 2026 Alumni Award winners.

A University of Queensland study has outlined a practical pathway for accelerating the development of heat adapted chickpeas using data from new ‘omic’ technologies. PhD candidate Callum Jamie said the suite of technologies offered tremendous opportunities to understand how a complex trait like heat tolerance works. “The narrow genetic diversity in the elite chickpea gene pool has limited conventional breeding’s effectiveness for stress tolerance,” Mr Jamie said. “These technologies have improved our capacity to dissect trait architecture and phenotype secondary traits but their use in chickpeas has been limited.” The technologies include genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, phenomics and enviromics, and help provide a comprehensive picture of biological systems. Epigenomics helps understand what controls gene activity; transcriptomics considers gene expression; proteomics protein production; metabolomics looks at biochemical processes; phenomics observes traits; and enviromics considers environmental factors influencing outcomes. Mr Jamie said previous studies had focused on just 1 to 2 -omic datasets, a small number of genotypes, and single tissues. This has meant it was hard to infer what results meant for trait architecture and mechanisms and the ability to extrapolate the information to breeding populations was limited. There have also been challenges around cost, scalability and integrating very different types of data to make the technologies useful. To overcome the hurdles, Mr Jamie’s research at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation has resulted in a proposed staged approach. It would start with genomic prediction and phenotyping, before adding -omic layers as costs fall and unknowns were resolved. “These technologies are novel and we still don’t know which information provides added value and how best to integrate all of this data to achieve an outcome,” Mr Jamie said. His PhD is supported by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) and the International Research Training Group (IRTG) Accelerating Crop Genetic Gain and is aligned to a project which aims to fast-track the development of chickpea varieties adapted to high temperatures. Project leader Dr Millicent Smith said heat stress causes severe yield implications through flower and pod loss, reduced pollen viability and impaired grain filling. “Late sown chickpea is particularly in the firing line across most of Australia's crop in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales,” Dr Smith said. “We want to ensure that Australian growers maintain their competitive edge. “New varieties with improved genetics to cope with heat stress are essential for the future. “This work, suggesting a staged approach to utilising the new -omic technologies, is an exciting frontier.” The research was published by Food and Energy Security. Callum Jamie’s PhD is supported by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) and the International Research Training Group (IRTG) Accelerating Crop Genetic Gain.