New Highland lentil has farmers gathering

PB Seeds will market PBA Highland XT, developed by Pulse Breeding Australia, as an imazamox and imazapyr tolerant line that is earlier maturing than other herbicide tolerant lentil cultivars such as PBA Hurricane XT and PBA Hallmark XT.

As well as having an Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) permit for imazamox and imazapyr it also has improved tolerance to herbicides such as flumetsulam and an improved handling of residual levels of sulfonylurea and imidazolinone herbicides that may have been used on the previous year's crop.

Highland, officially launched at last week's southern pulse agronomy field day at Horsham, has been bred for planting across much of Australia's lentil growing region, with yield data showing it performed slightly better in lower yielding, drier environments such as the Victorian and South Australian Mallee regions.

The variety has good early vigour and early flowering, suitable to minimising the risk of heat shock.

In terms of its disease resistance profile it is moderately resistant to both ascochyta blight (AB) and botrytis grey mould, the two major diseases in lentils.

Importantly, its resistance against AB is also valid against a newly identified strain of the disease causing the breakdown of resistance in other varieties.

It is a red lentil with a slightly smaller seed size than Hallmark, but slightly larger than Hurricane and will fit into medium sized human consumption markets.

Herbicide tolerance is critical in many Mallee farming systems where there is often insufficient rain to incorporate Clearfield herbicides after application meaning susceptible plants can be damaged after sowing if following a crop where a Group B herbicide was used.