PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Amy Watson
AU  - Sreya Ghosh
AU  - Matthew J. Williams
AU  - William S. Cuddy
AU  - James Simmonds
AU  - María-Dolores Rey
AU  - M. Asyraf Md Hatta
AU  - Alison Hinchliffe
AU  - Andrew Steed
AU  - Daniel Reynolds
AU  - Nikolai Adamski
AU  - Andy Breakspear
AU  - Andrey Korolev
AU  - Tracey Rayner
AU  - Laura E. Dixon
AU  - Adnan Riaz
AU  - William Martin
AU  - Merrill Ryan
AU  - David Edwards
AU  - Jacqueline Batley
AU  - Harsh Raman
AU  - Christian Rogers
AU  - Claire Domoney
AU  - Graham Moore
AU  - Wendy Harwood
AU  - Paul Nicholson
AU  - Mark J. Dieters
AU  - Ian H. DeLacy
AU  - Ji Zhou
AU  - Cristobal Uauy
AU  - Scott A. Boden
AU  - Robert F. Park
AU  - Brande B. H. Wulff
AU  - Lee T. Hickey
TI  - Speed breeding: a powerful tool to accelerate crop research and breeding
AID  - 10.1101/161182
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 161182
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/09/161182.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/09/161182.full
AB  - 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 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.