Harnessing Speed Breeding in Controlled Environment Ecosystem for Millets Sustainability

ABSTRACT Millet breeding focuses on improving essential traits such as grain yield, head structure, tiller production, early maturity, reduced plant height, biomass, digestibility and key nutrients like vitamin B1, lysine, cysteine and methionine. Traditional breeding, especially in open environments, can take 9–17 years to release a new variety, whereas speed breeding in controlled environments shortens this to 5–9 years. This accelerated process tackles challenges like male sterility, self‐incompatibility, seed shattering, inbreeding depression and embryo abortion. Techniques such as rapid single‐seed descent enable the creation of near‐homozygous lines in 1–2 years, allowing finger millet to achieve up to five generations per year. Indoor phenotyping platforms enhance speed breeding by providing detailed, consistent monitoring of plant traits. High‐throughput systems in controlled settings like growth chambers or glasshouses allow for non‐invasive assessment of entire crop canopies, measuring traits such as leaf expansion, width, phyllochron and stomatal conductance. This precise phenotyping accelerates trait evaluation and selection, facilitating the development of superior millet varieties. Supported by advanced phenotyping and gene‐editing tools, speed breeding offers a robust solution for improving key agronomic traits, significantly reducing breeding time in controlled environments.