Breeding More Crops in Less Time: A Perspective on Speed Breeding
Kajal Samantara,
Abhishek Bohra,
Sourav Ranjan Mohapatra,
Riry Prihatini,
Flora Asibe,
Lokendra Singh,
Vincent P. Reyes,
Abha Tiwari,
Alok Kumar Maurya,
Janine S. Croser,
Shabir Hussain Wani,
Kadambot H. M. Siddique,
Rajeev K. Varshney
Affiliations
Kajal Samantara
Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Centurion University of Technology and Management, Parlakhemundi 761211, Odisha, India
Abhishek Bohra
ICAR-Indian Institute of Pulses Research (IIPR), Kanpur 208024, Uttar Pradesh, India
Sourav Ranjan Mohapatra
Division of Genetics and Tree Improvement, Forest Research Institute, Dehradun 173230, Uttarakhand, India
Riry Prihatini
Indonesian Tropical Fruit Research Institute, Solok 27301, West Sumatera, Indonesia
Flora Asibe
International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan 200001, Oyo State, Nigeria
Lokendra Singh
Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Agriculture and Forestry University, Chitwan 44200, Nepal
Vincent P. Reyes
Graduate School of Bioagricultural Sciences, Nagoya University, Chikusa, Nagoya 464-8601, Aichi, Japan
Abha Tiwari
ICAR-Indian Institute of Pulses Research (IIPR), Kanpur 208024, Uttar Pradesh, India
Alok Kumar Maurya
ICAR-Indian Institute of Pulses Research (IIPR), Kanpur 208024, Uttar Pradesh, India
Janine S. Croser
The UWA Institute of Agriculture, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA 6009, Australia
Shabir Hussain Wani
Mountain Research Center for Field Crops, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, Anantnag Khudwani, Srinagar 192101, Jammu and Kashmir, India
Kadambot H. M. Siddique
The UWA Institute of Agriculture, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA 6009, Australia
Rajeev K. Varshney
Centre of Excellence in Genomics and Systems Biology, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Hyderabad 502324, Andhra Pradesh, India
Breeding crops in a conventional way demands considerable time, space, inputs for selection, and the subsequent crossing of desirable plants. The duration of the seed-to-seed cycle is one of the crucial bottlenecks in the progress of plant research and breeding. In this context, speed breeding (SB), relying mainly on photoperiod extension, temperature control, and early seed harvest, has the potential to accelerate the rate of plant improvement. Well demonstrated in the case of long-day plants, the SB protocols are being extended to short-day plants to reduce the generation interval time. Flexibility in SB protocols allows them to align and integrate with diverse research purposes including population development, genomic selection, phenotyping, and genomic editing. In this review, we discuss the different SB methodologies and their application to hasten future plant improvement. Though SB has been extensively used in plant phenotyping and the pyramiding of multiple traits for the development of new crop varieties, certain challenges and limitations hamper its widespread application across diverse crops. However, the existing constraints can be resolved by further optimization of the SB protocols for critical food crops and their efficient integration in plant breeding pipelines.
