Western Australian graingrowers could soon offset the economic challenges of dry or drought seasons by capturing dividends on their investments in new grain varieties.

Almost 2000 Western Australian growers supported $1 million of private research through the Council of Grain Grower Organisations (COGGO) last year and at the 2002 COGGO Spring Field Day, held at the University of Western Australia Research Park, members were told that the first new varieties arising from that investment would soon hit the market.

"COGGO, with the Export Grains Centre Ltd (EGC), is an investor in Western Australia-based Grain Biotech Australia Pty Ltd (GBA), which should release its first new variety to growers by 2004," Bindi Bindi grower and COGGO Chairman, Bruce Piper said.

"All GBA varieties have been bred with triple rust resistance, so we expect good adoption of the new variety when it arrives, to give Western Australian growers battling stripe rust a new, locally bred weapon."

GBA Chief Executive Officer, Ian Edwards, said GBA aimed to stream income from seed sales of new varieties back to grower investors, such as COGGO members.

"Now that we have all our structures in place, we hope to release two new varieties per year for use in Australian market classes and environments, if not specifically for Western Australia."

These varieties are expected to be released at a cost of just $500,000 each, which is, on average, between five and eight times less expensive than publicly bred varieties.

Another of COGGO’s commercial breeding interests, Canola Breeders Western Australia (CBWA), drew substantial grower interest on the back of its recent link with a third shareholder, the 100 year old German breeding company, NPZ-Lembke.

CBWA has just been licensed by the University of Western Australia (UWA) to test new, early flowering progeny, with good drought tolerance and blackleg resistance, for commercial release.

The progeny were developed when a COGGO-supported UWA project crossed new canola-oil quality producing Indian mustard (B.juncea) plants with commercial canola varieties.

"Some of the descendants have larger seeds and higher seed oil and protein content than current commercial varieties and would boost the genetic diversity of canola adapted to Western Australian conditions," CBWA Principal Research Scientist, Associate Professor Wallace Cowling said.

The progeny have performed well in drought trials at Merredin and the blackleg disease nursery at Shenton Park.