Researchers hope the elusive native sorghum seed will one day provide important traits, which plant breeders can tap into to improve cultivated crops grown in Australia.

The seed was found during a week-long seed collecting mission in the Northern Territory,

Horsham researcher and Australian Grains Genebank manager Sally Norton led the project.

She went on a trip through Katherine and Kakadu National Park, which resulted in 21 new populations of wild sorghum, rice, mungbean and pigeonpea joining the extensive seed collection housed at Horsham.

This is the fourth time Dr Norton has collected seed from the Northern Territory, having previously journeyed to the country's top end in 1997, 2001 and 2018.

"The purpose of the expedition was to collect wild relatives of Australian crops for conservation in the seed bank, and subsequent use in research and seed breeding programs," Dr Norton said.

"The additional aspect to this trip, and the one in 2018, was to provide training for traditional owners and indigenous rangers on how to best collect seed from wild plants for long term conservation.

"During the process, we also learned about some traditional uses of some plants including one type of sorghum 'big spear grass' used for fishing as a kind of burley."

Dr Norton said wild seed relatives were important for conservation as they were second or third cousins to our cultivated crops.

"All the grain crops farmers grow in Australia originated overseas and have been bred to suit Australian conditions," she said.

"The wild relatives we have collected are truly Australian and over time have developed specific genetic traits that allow them to grow well in our climate with very little inputs compared with farmed crops.

"These cousins of the cultivated crops have a lot of diversity in their genetic material, which is of interest to plant breeders.

"We also keep wild relatives to take pressure of Australian plant populations."

The seed collecting trip was conducted by Agriculture Victoria in partnership with the Millennium Seed Bank, the Grains Research and Development Corporation and the Australia Seed Bank Partnership.

The Australian Grains Genebank opened in Horsham in 2014.

The $6-million centre includes more than 2.7 kilometres of shelf space at minus-20 degrees and has the capacity to hold 200,000 packets of seed.

The collection has rapidly grown by about 3000 seeds each year.

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