In Australia, agriculture simultaneously represents the primary source of anthropogenic methane emissions and its largest potential terrestrial methane sink. This review details the principal Australian agricultural sectors involved in methane flux, the environmental, geochemical and biological factors which control methane flux in these agroecosystems and scope for mitigation strategies, and finally how methane flux in Australian agroecosystems may respond to predicted global changes in response to climate change drivers. Future research directions are discussed.

Most soils used for crop production in WA have soil P levels above critical levels and soil pH below 5.5. In a field experiment with wheat, shoot P concentration was higher in the + lime than the – lime treatment when 0 P was applied. For grain yield, the magnitude of the response was greatest for rate of P applied, followed by lime treatment and then crop sequence and there were no interactions between these

Wheat alien chromosome addition lines are important genetic resources for wheat breeding; thus, screening and characterisation for target traits in the addition lines is a prerequisite for efficient utilisation of alien chromosomes. In this study, the effects of additional chromosomes on agronomic, photosynthetic and seedling traits of common wheat were evaluated using 34 addition lines, and some addition lines that had better performance were identified. The lines or alien chromosomes with specific traits could be used for target breeding program.

Water-stressed induced apical sterility is a main barrier to wheat production in dry region. The results of current study indicated that considerable variations exist among diploid, tetraploid and hexaploid Iranian wheats. These variations could help breeders to breed modern wheat cultivars tolerant to water-stress. These results also provided some evidences implying that apical sterility may be due to effect of water-stress on anther weight.

Relative to maize, teosinte (Zea mexicana L.) displays lower heat injury, sustained chlorophyll content under heat stress (36-45°C) and high seedling survival% (55°C). Teosinte can also produce large plant biomass (27% and 55% higher yield than maize under non-stressed and stress condition, respectively).These features allow teosinte to be exploited as a forage crop.In this study, interspecific hybrids had higher oil (20% and 4%) and protein contents (14% and 25%) than teosinte.

Physiological breeding for improving drought tolerance in perennial forage legume species has been a complex task because of the low association between single physiological traits and dry matter (DM) production. Field experiments results show that the combination of multiple physiological traits into a suitable index helps to increase the association between DM production and physiological traits and therefore the selection efficiency of drought-tolerant genotypes. The scope of this article is to show that it is possible to select genotypes by applying physiological tools.

Tropical grasses are being incorporated into temperate grasslands suffering from flooding, as a result of less restrictive winters due to global warming. Flooding tolerance of Chloris gayana and Panicum coloratum was assessed at different times of the year. In winter, P. coloratum had higher tolerance to flooding than C. gayana. In spring, both species showed similar moderate growth reduction to flooding. Irrespective of any growth reduction due to flooding, both species displayed remarkably fast full recovery from flooding during early summer, which pose both species as promising options for temperate lowland grasslands.