Supporting genetic resilience is paramount to the health of Australia’s agricultural market, thanks in part to our continent’s unique mix of arid to temperate, subtropical, and tropical growing conditions. With hardier crops (i.e. heat, drought, frost, pest resistance, etc.) also becoming more popular amongst Aussie farmers for resource optimisation and climate-ready operations, seed banks are playing a major role in adapting Aussie agriculture for rapidly evolving ecological conditions.
Seed banks like the Australian Grains Genebank based in Horsham and the Australian Pastures Genebank in Adelaide also routinely report on the seeds and grains that have been archived in their collection. Below, we’ll spotlight some of the most surprising additions to Australian agrarian seed banks and outline why exactly these crops have been pinpointed as crucial for the future of Australian farming.
Cannabis
With medicinal cannabis now accessible to patients via GP prescriptions across the country, cannabis research and cultivation projects have secured greater interest from the Australian Government. The natural plasticity of cannabis plant genetics is also providing unique opportunities for agricultural scientists to develop cannabis strains with optimal characteristics for cultivation in local Australian growing conditions.
This is where seed banks come into the picture. As cannabis researchers continue to develop autoflowering cannabis seeds bred for Australian growing conditions, local seed banks can then securely archive these new cannabis strains and preserve their genetic material for future research projects and/or to safeguard cannabis cultivation at a commercial scale, as Australia’s budding cannabis industry continues to grow.
Industrial hemp
Unlike medicinal or recreational cannabis, industrial hemp maintains almost no THC or cannabidiol content (approximately < 0.3% as opposed to 10-30% in cannabis or marijuana plants), so this crop isn’t cultivated to produce therapeutic products or naturally derived medicines. Instead, industrial hemp is a prolific, fast-growing crop that offers highly dense and fibrous foliage, stalks, and seeds or grains.
The sheer abundance of natural plant material produced by industrial hemp plants make them a powerhouse for creating raw materials ready for manufacturing, fabrication, and even food manufacturing. Today, we can see industrial hemp materials being used in fashion and textiles, paper, construction materials (i.e. hempcrete), foods (i.e. hemp proteins), and even bioplastics.
As industrial hemp is also found to be significantly more drought-tolerant and less water-hungry than other fibre crops like cotton, Australia is also well-positioned to be one of the world’s highest capacity producers of industrial hemp products – and all while using a fraction of the resources we currently use. As far as future-ready farming is concerned, there really is no other crop with as much potential.
Poppies
Similar to cannabis, poppies are cultivated for medicinal purposes. These striking flowers produce a valuable natural opiate that’s commonly used for producing pain-relieving medication.
Much like cannabis, poppy farming is also largely recognised for its sustainability factor, offering high outputs for minimal resource consumption. Poppy plants are naturally drought-tolerant and can easily thrive in arid or semi-arid regions, including areas with less soil nutrient availability. This also makes poppy farming ideal in the face of current rising fertiliser costs.
Poppy plants can also play a pivotal role in crop rotation cycles, thanks in part to their natural resistance to pests and diseases that affect other crops like wheat and grains. Aussie farmers can sow poppy seeds in their fields during adverse seasons or periods to keep on producing during their off peak, and harvest once the new sowing season begins for their other more sensitive crops.
Both the high commercial value of poppies and its sustainability factor in balancing other crop cycles, make poppies an essential crop in Australia’s agricultural economy, both today and in the future. As a result, Australian seed banks work to maintain poppy seed catalogues both in the short-term (i.e. in between crop cycles) and over the long term, to ensure poppy farming stays accessible to farmers across the country.
Grapes
Australia’s viticultural industry is renowned worldwide for producing some of the most dynamic flavour profiles. From the Barossa Valley to Hunter Valley, Margaret River, and even right here in Victoria across Mornington or the Yarra Valley, every bottle tells a unique story, capturing a season in time and opening up a taste of the sunburnt country to the big, wide world.
The issue with our viticultural sector, however, is that grapevines are sensitive to a host of different diseases, like black spot, fungal growth, and the rapidly spreading Xylella bacterium that affects not only vineyards but also orchards and olive farms across the country.
Viticultural researchers are constantly at work across disease monitoring projects, and part of their work inevitably involves developing disease- and fungal-resistant grape varieties through crossbreeding heritage block vines with wild resistance genes. The resulting new hybrid varieties maintain the complex flavours of heritage grapevines whilst exhibiting improved resilience. And again, this iterative advancement in grape varieties wouldn’t be possible without seed banks recording the fruits of Australia’s unique viticultural research.
Temperate pulses
Pulses are the dry, edible seeds of plants found in the legume family (Fabaceae). In this category of crops, you can expect to find chickpeas, lentils, faba beans, kidney beans, lupins, black beans, and dried peas – amongst many others. As plant-based proteins grow in demand worldwide, legumes are becoming a more widely recognised agricultural market, and not just a crop used for livestock feeding.
Australia’s eastern coast offers exceptional climatic conditions for cultivating temperate pulses like lentils, chickpeas, and field peas. For this reason, more Aussie grain farmers are expanding their operations to include pulse farming for consumer markets. Australian seed banks have followed suit by expanding their crop catalogues to include more pulses. In fact, the Australian Grains Genebank has estimated that 25% of their total collection is now temperate pulses considered to be most suitable for Australian growing conditions and market demands.
With legume farming only continuing to take up more market share across Australia’s agricultural sector, it’s safe to assume that the AGG’s collection ratios between cereals, legumes, and oilseeds will continue to grow more balanced.
Native crops
Finally, Australian farmers aren’t just growing the same grains and cereals being cultivated all over the world: they’re also growing uniquely native Australian crops like finger limes, Davidson’s plums, kakadu plums, quandongs, macadamia nuts, native yams, lemon myrtle, and a whole range of other aromatic herbs, fruits, and root crops that are garnering global demand.
Today, native Australian crops are being used to produce artisanal and gourmet food items, from finger lime-infused gins to macadamia nut granolas, lemon myrtle salt rubs, kakadu plum jams, and a variety of other goods that are becoming pantry staples for discerning foodies worldwide.
These native crops don’t just offer high export value either. Being endemic to Australia, these crops also offer exceptional value when it comes to market sustainability, with farmers being able to cultivate high yields with minimal resource requirements.
But these crops aren’t without their fair share of vulnerabilities, as native crops can still be susceptible to diseases affecting introduced crop species like wheat grains and other cereals. Seed banks based both here in Australia as well as abroad (for added biosecurity) help to ensure future generations can enjoy these endemic crops.
What future-ready crops have most piqued your interest?
We may feel very isolated down here at the bottom of the world, but truth be told, our agricultural research and conservation efforts are a smaller part of a larger global movement supporting future-ready farming. Australia’s climate and unique soil profiles simply provide another vital sandbox for agricultural researchers, and all the efforts of these researchers and our Aussie farmers culminate in the hundreds of thousands of seeds that are being protected in seed banks today.
Whether you’re already reliant on the crops we’ve showcased today or you’ve been curious yourself to see how our farms and fields will evolve with the future, one thing is clear: the answer lies in our seed banks.
