Speed breeding is a powerful tool to accelerate crop research and breeding

Amy Watson, Sreya Ghosh, Matthew J. Williams, William S. Cuddy, James Simmonds, María Dolores Rey, M. Asyraf Md Hatta, Alison Hinchliffe, Andrew Steed, Daniel Reynolds, Nikolai M. Adamski, Andy Breakspear, Andrey Korolev, Tracey Rayner, Laura E. Dixon, Adnan Riaz, William Martin, Merrill Ryan, David Edwards, Jacqueline BatleyHarsh Raman, Jeremy Carter, Christian Rogers, Claire Domoney, Graham Moore, Wendy Harwood, Paul Nicholson, Mark J. Dieters, Ian H. Delacy, Ji Zhou, Cristobal Uauy, Scott A. Boden, Robert F. Park, Brande B.H. Wulff, Lee T. Hickey

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

747 Scopus citations

Abstract

The growing human population and a changing environment have raised significant concern for global food security, with the current improvement rate of several important crops inadequate to meet future demand 1 . This slow improvement rate is attributed partly to the long generation times of crop plants. Here, we present a method called 'speed breeding', which greatly shortens generation time and accelerates breeding and research programmes. Speed breeding can be used to achieve up to 6 generations per year for spring wheat (Triticum aestivum), durum wheat (T. durum), barley (Hordeum vulgare), chickpea (Cicer arietinum) and pea (Pisum sativum), and 4 generations for canola (Brassica napus), instead of 2-3 under normal glasshouse conditions. We demonstrate that speed breeding in fully enclosed, controlled-environment growth chambers can accelerate plant development for research purposes, including phenotyping of adult plant traits, mutant studies and transformation. The use of supplemental lighting in a glasshouse environment allows rapid generation cycling through single seed descent (SSD) and potential for adaptation to larger-scale crop improvement programs. Cost saving through light-emitting diode (LED) supplemental lighting is also outlined. We envisage great potential for integrating speed breeding with other modern crop breeding technologies, including high-throughput genotyping, genome editing and genomic selection, accelerating the rate of crop improvement.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)23-29
Number of pages7
JournalNature Plants
Volume4
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2018
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Generated from Scopus record by KAUST IRTS on 2023-02-20

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