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

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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 production
environments 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 supply
lower-value crushing markets to clear hilum types with the grain qualities required for human
consumption markets. Advances in yield, disease resistance and other agronomic traits are also
targeted.
Primarily, a single seed descent method is used to advance populations to the F4 level of
inbreeding. Varieties from the Australian Soybean Breeding Program are not genetically
modified (non-GMO). Regional evaluation and selection for environmental adaptation
and specific regional traits is carried out across a wide range of environments in the target
production regions. Typically, new soybean lines progress through stages of small-scale
replicated evaluations for 6–8 seasons, with processors conducting small-scale grain
evaluations. Advanced lines then complete evaluation in replicated on-farm experiments
before commercial licensing and release.
This paper summarises data from multi-season replicated evaluations and on-farm
experiments of RichmondA, a new variety for production in northern New South Wales.