Agrifutures Project: PRJ-010875, https://www.agrifutures.com.au/related-projects/ensuring-lucerne-seed-production-in-the-absence-of-bees/ Summary: Lucerne is an important world pasture species. Australia is the third largest exporter of Lucerne seed. Bee decline is seen as a potential threat to this industry. The debate on managing the impact of bee decline on food production has focused on bees. Modifying the plant’s need for insect pollination has not be seriously considered. Experience with a range of species suggests selecting for self-pollination in crops is a viable option. Lucerne is an auto-polyploid species and finding rare recessive alleles in auto-polyploid species is significantly harder than in diploids or allopolyploids. A large and diverse Lucerne population will be developed and maintained in insect-proof screen-houses at UWA to provide an effective screen to select for self-pollination. The project screened around 60,000 genotypes from a very diverse group of Medicago sativa germplasm (provided by the Crop Trust alfalfa pre-breeding project, GS19001) for the capacity to self-pollinate and produce seed. The aim was to allow for the detection of up to a 4 gene system for self-pollination ability in lucerne. University of Western Australia greenhouses provided a suitable environment for testing the selected plants both with and without bees to determine whether the material selected is truly capable of self-pollination. In the first generation around 20 plants were selected with good seed production characteristics. Seed of APG 85054 is the fith generation of seed produced in the absence of bees and other insects, with continued selection for improved seed yield in each generation. The accession contains 28 parents that will be maintained by producing seed through self-pollination, with progeny seed made available from each individual parent when requested.