New inoculant technologies are being introduced to Australia to improve the delivery of rhizobia to grain legumes. Although elite rhizobial strains have been developed for Australian legumes, their adoption and application has been limited by a lack of user-friendly methods of inoculant application and reluctance on the part of farmers to use slurry inoculation. Recently, granular and liquid inoculants have become available for the Australian grain legume market. While these new delivery systems are likely to provide great advantages in the efficient delivery of inoculants, their effectiveness has not been independently tested in Australian farming systems. We investigated the efficacy of peat granular inoculants, bentonite clay granular inoculants and freeze dried inoculants to deliver rhizobia to nodulate chickpea, faba bean, lentil, lupin and pea crops in comparison with uninoculated treaments and with standard peat-based inoculants. Twenty eight field experiments were established in Victoria and southern New South Wales over four years. Nodulation at field sites was highly dependent upon the background soil rhizobial population and the type of grain legume sown. Freeze dried rhizobial inoculants applied in liquid form provided adequate nodulation of grain legumes, similar to that achieved by peat slurry inoculants. Granular inoculants varied markedly in their ability to provide nodulation of grain legumes – peat granules provided nodulation equivalent to peat slurry based inoculation, while bentonite clay granules frequently provided nodulation that did not improve nodulation above that of uninoculated treatments. Combined, these results indicated that inoculants differ markedly in their ability to produce nodules on a range of grain legumes. Constraints regarding the use of new inoculants are also discussed.