What was it all about?

This investment, which ran from 2015 to 2019, established a genetic map for macadamia, the first native Australian plant to become a major international food crop and an important contributor to the domestic horticultural industry.

The genetic map will assist future research with the identification and location of genes that control important traits such as pest and disease resistance, quality and yield. Greater understanding of the breeding system of macadamia is likely to have major implications for landscape and orchard-scale management.

The genome of one of the most widely grown cultivars in Australia, Macadamia integrifolia cultivar HAES 741, was sequenced and assembled at Southern Cross University.

Population and genetic linkage mapping were used to order and orient the genome sequence scaffolds, to produce a chromosome-scale assembly with DNA sequences representing the 14 chromosomes of macadamia. Annotation of this assembly identified 34,274 protein-coding genes representing 91 per cent of the expected gene content of macadamia.

Data from plants, populations and mapping developed through the project has been entered into the curated, open-source database CropStoreDB.

These genomic resources are expected to support future breeding and the long-term conservation of natural populations. 

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Read more about the outcomes of this project in an article called DNA paternity testing in the orchard: self- and cross-pollination, published in the Australian Macadamia Society News Bulletin, Autumn 2020 (pp.70-72) and available to macadamia levy payers on their website.