@article {Watson161182, author = {Amy Watson and Sreya Ghosh and Matthew J. Williams and William S. Cuddy and James Simmonds and Mar{\'\i}a-Dolores Rey and M. Asyraf Md Hatta and Alison Hinchliffe and Andrew Steed and Daniel Reynolds and Nikolai Adamski and Andy Breakspear and Andrey Korolev and Tracey Rayner and Laura E. Dixon and Adnan Riaz and William Martin and Merrill Ryan and David Edwards and Jacqueline Batley and Harsh Raman and Christian Rogers and Claire Domoney and Graham Moore and Wendy Harwood and Paul Nicholson and Mark J. Dieters and Ian H. DeLacy and Ji Zhou and Cristobal Uauy and Scott A. Boden and Robert F. Park and Brande B. H. Wulff and Lee T. Hickey}, title = {Speed breeding: a powerful tool to accelerate crop research and breeding}, elocation-id = {161182}, year = {2017}, doi = {10.1101/161182}, publisher = {Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory}, 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 {\textquoteleft}speed breeding{\textquoteright}, which greatly shortens generation time and accelerates breeding and research programs. 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 and potential for adaptation to larger-scale crop improvement programs. Cost-saving through 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.}, URL = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/09/161182}, eprint = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/09/161182.full.pdf}, journal = {bioRxiv} }