The LongReach Business Approach

LongReach understands the need for breeding programs to respond quickly to the needs of growers, marketers and end-users. Traditional plant breeding systems take many years and the results can be uncertain. The structure of LongReach ensures that it moves quickly, responds to the market and can implement change as demanded.

The LongReach business model is based on partnership and strategic investment. LongReach has commercial arrangements with technology owners and developers and collaborates extensively on key breeding projects in Australia and globally.

Back to Top

A National Approach

LongReach’s national trial program is long in its reach to breed varieties for all of the major Australian production zones.

LongReach’s trial program reflects the diverse nature of Australia’s wheat production areas. Each year LongReach operates over 40 breeding and evaluation sites located in all key wheat producing regions of Australian wheat belt. It is also involved in more than 20 collaborative germplasm evaluation and agronomic management R&D projects in Australia as well as participating in the GRDC funded National Variety testing programs. LongReach is the largest private investor in agronomic and R&D contract services in Australia, most of which are based in rural and regional Australia.

The production environments LongReach is breeding for range from the light, deep sandy acid to neutral pH soils of Western Australia, to the alkaline soils and Mediterranean climate of southern Australia where three different nematodes (cereal cyst (Heterodera avaenae) and Root Lesion (P. thornei and P. neglectus) nematodes are a constant threat. LongReach is also active in the red brown earth soils of southern and central NSW and north central and northeast Victoria as well as in the well structured, high fertility soils of Australia’s summer dominant rainfall production zone in northern NSW and the Queensland winter cropping areas.

Back to Top

A Unique Operating Model

To allow the maximum possible investment in field selection and evaluation, technology and materials, LongReach contracts the services it requires from the best available local and international professional suppliers.

By keeping capital and infrastructure costs down, LongReach is able to efficiently focus on rapid development and release of varieties. LongReach does not own or operate research stations or laboratories. These facilities are readily accessible across the country and around the world.

The majority of LongReach field trials are conducted on commercial farms to ensure future varieties are evaluated under the same conditions they will face when grown as a commercial crop.

Back to Top

Focussed Breeding Activities

LongReach will deliver excellent varieties and high quality seed. Excellence means resistance to pathogens; good plant types, with good emergence, vigour, plant height & lodging resistance; consistent field performance with high strike rates for grain receival specifications and sought-after quality attributes for millers and end-users.

LongReach will increase the speed of delivery of better varieties to growers, as this is the key to meeting both emerging production challenges - such as rust resistance breakdowns, and the changing needs of processors.

The LongReach program spans all major geographic regions with operations located in each of the major production regions. Detailed information about variety field performance and quality is built up each season over the range of environments. Growers will be confident that the LongReach variety they use will perform.

The standard LongReach screening regime incorporates intensive disease resistance screening under contract by reputable external agencies such as Sydney University Plant Breeding Institute, SARDI, DPI Victoria, Qld DPI&F and NSW DPI. In-house nurseries are also based in strategic locations in Australia and overseas.

Our disease screening is primarily focussed on resistance to stem, stripe and leaf rust, with secondary targets being the pathogens associated with specific environments such as CCN, RLN, Yellow Leaf Spot and Septoria.

Back to Top

International links to assist variety development

The breeding program also involves international screening for specific agronomic and disease traits in conjunction with Syngenta breeders and research facilities in Europe, North and South America as well as working with local and overseas agencies in both the public and private sectors.

Use of Molecular Markers

Both Syngenta and LongReach are investing in marker-assisted selection technology; i.e., the use of DNA testing to make selection of new varieties more efficient and more certain. Most of the LongReach molecular marker screening is conducted at Syngenta’s cereal molecular marker facility in France.

Syngenta research activities are also targeting marker development and the results of this worldwide research program are available to LongReach. This research includes disease resistance, end-user processing quality and problems such as pre-harvest sprouting.

As the molecular markers for these traits become available, they will further improve the speed and efficiency of the LongReach breeding program. This access to the worldwide technology resources of Syngenta is of enormous value to the Australian breeding business.

Back to Top