Lupin: the largest grain legume crop in Western Australia, its adaptation and improvement through plant breeding
Robert J. French A C D and Bevan J. Buirchell B CA Department of Agriculture Western Australia, Dryland Research Institute, PO Box 432, Merredin, WA 6415, Australia.
B Department of Agriculture Western Australia, Locked Bag 4, Bentley, WA 6983, Australia.
C Centre for Legumes in Mediterranean Agriculture, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia.
D Corresponding author. Email: bfrench@agric.wa.gov.au
Australian Journal of Agricultural Research 56(11) 1169-1180 https://doi.org/10.1071/AR05088
Submitted: 9 March 2005 Accepted: 21 September 2005 Published: 29 November 2005
Abstract
Between 500 000 and 1 000 000 tonnes of narrow-leafed lupins (Lupinus angustifolius L.) are produced in Western Australia each year. It has become the predominant grain legume in Western Australian agriculture because it is peculiarly well adapted to acid sandy soils and the Mediterranean climate of south-western Australia. It has a deep root system and root growth is not reduced in mildly acid soils, which allows it to fully exploit the water and nutrients in the deep acid sandplain soils that cover much of the agricultural areas of Western Australia. It copes with seasonal drought through drought escape and dehydration postponement. Drought escape is lupin’s main adaptation to drought, and has been strengthened by plant breeders over the past 40 years by removal of the vernalisation requirement for flowering, and further selection for earlier flowering and maturity. Lupin postpones dehydration by several mechanisms. Its deep root system allows it to draw on water from deep in the soil profile. Lupin stomata close to reduce crop water demand at a higher leaf water potential than wheat, but photosynthetic rates are higher when well watered. It has been proposed that stomata close in response to roots sensing receding soil moisture, possibly at a critical water potential at the root surface. This is an adaptation to sandy soils, which hold a greater proportion of their water at high matric potentials than loamy or clayey soils, since the crop needs to moderate its water use while there is still sufficient soil water left to complete its life cycle. Lupin has limited capacity for osmotic adjustment, and does not tolerate dehydration as well as other crops such as wheat or chickpea. Plant breeding has increased the yield potential of lupin in the main lupin growing areas of Western Australia by 2–3 fold since the first adapted cultivar was released in 1967. This has been due largely to selecting earlier flowering and maturing cultivars, but also to improved pod set and retention, resistance to Phomopsis leptostromiformis (Kühn) Bubák, and more rapid seed filling. We propose a model for reproductive development in lupin where vegetative growth is terminated in response to receding soil moisture and followed by a period in which all assimilate is devoted to seed filling. This should allow lupin to adjust its developmental pattern in response to seasonal conditions to something like the optimum that mathematical optimal control theory would choose for that season. This is the type of pattern that has evolved in lupin, and the task of future plant breeders will be to fine-tune it to better suit the environment in the lupin growing areas of Western Australia.
Additional keywords: dehydration postponement, drought escape, osmotic adjustment, root systems.
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the organisers of the symposium ‘Adaptation of plants to water-limited Mediterranean-type environments’ for providing us with the stimulus to prepare this review, and the Grains Research and Development Corporation for financial support. Dr Katia Stefanova conducted the statistical analysis of the data presented in Figure 4.
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