Ambar - an early flowering desi chickpea with ascochyta blight resistance

Page last updated: Thursday, 28 June 2018 - 10:01am

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Ambar is well adapted to most of southern Australia, particularly the northern wheatbelt of Western Australia. With early flowering, it is well suited to shorter growing season (low rainfall) environments.

Key features

  • Desi chickpea variety that combines early flowering, competitive yield and ascochyta blight resistance.
  • Ascochyta blight resistance is rates as resistant (R).
  • It is the earliest flowering and earliest maturing of all current varieties making it particularly well suited to short season environments.
  • Bushy growth habit and profuse branching helps to utilise good growing conditions.
  • Seed size is similar to Genesis 836, 16 grams per 100 seeds.
  • A uniform seed size and light brown seed coat colour make it attractive for marketing.

Name

Ambar is a Hindu/Urdu (the most widely spoken languages in the Indian subcontinent) word referring to the gem, amber. This follows the Western Australian convention of naming chickpea varieties in the language of the target market and referring to gems or precious metals found in Australia.

It has been tested as WACPE2136 and 99262-WA10.

Breeding

This variety has been developed by Dr Tanveer Khan — former Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia (DAFWA) plant breeder, Winthrop Professor Kadambot Siddique (University of Western Australia) and the DAFWA pulse breeding team. The cross (ICCV92501/ICC13729//WACPE2021/ICCV96808) was made in 1999 in Tamworth and then transferred as F4 generation to WA. The segregating population was grown at Merredin in 2003 and subjected to ascochyta blight epidemic. A single plant showing ascochyta blight resistance and desirable agronomic traits was harvested individually and progeny grown in 2004, again at Merredin, along with other single plant selections. This line was then observed as genetically fixed and tested at multi-locations breeding trials until 2011.

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