New Green Revolution - Speed Breeding

Current global population increase coupled with climatic change causes food insecurity.In order to face this challenge, NASA inspired space technology called "speed breeding" was reformed and practiced by scientists in University of Queensland to hasten the generation cycle in plants.In long-day [22 hours of light/2 hours of darkness] and short-day crops [8 to 12 hours of light/16 to 12 hours of darkness] generation cycle has been improved to four to six generations per year in speed breeding.In conventional breeding or glass house without supplementary lighting, it takes minimum of 10 to 15 years to produce hybrid vigor, whereas in speed breeding this could be significantly reduced to half.Implementing marker assisted breeding as well as genomic approaches along with speed breeding results in quicker development of crops with high genetic gain.In this review, we have briefly discussed different protocols of speed breeding in wheat, barley, rice, canola and few other crops.In addition to this, significance and limitations of speed breeding and its future outlook is also outlined.