The right inoculant selection for Australian Farming conditions

The AIRG curates a selection of suitable rhizobia for inoculant products that are tested for Australian farming conditions. Ensuring that new and compatible rhizobia are available to successfully nodulate Australia’s expanding selection of grain and pasture varieties/cultivars is critical. Farmers are becoming increasingly aware that they are more exposed to climate variability, unpredictable weather events and disease-associated risks. These risks now play a major part in crop and pasture selection for increased resilience to extreme weather and constrained soil conditions. So too, the AIRG are playing an important role in rhizobial strain selection, testing, evaluation and recommendation of these important crops and pastures, ensuring that suitable rhizobia will be effective and persistent in Australia’s challenging growing conditions. This level of independent scrutiny provides a high degree of confidence to farmers that Australian inoculant products on store shelves are precisely “fit for purpose”.

With long-standing research and development partnerships in place with Australia’s leading rhizobium research agencies, the AIRG are also at the forefront of emerging suitable strains for use in future manufactured products. These are scrutinised for effective nodulation and N fixation across related legume species/cultivars, viability during application processes, genetic stability and suitability for manufacturing processes.

Currently there are 42 rhizobia strains covering over 100 species and cultivars of grain and pasture approved by the AIRG and the National Rhizobium Steering Committee.