Speed breeding: Accelerating the path to climate-resilient crops and global food security

Speed breeding is an advanced and innovative plant breeding approach designed to accelerate crop improvement by shortening generation time under controlled environmental conditions and has garnered considerable attention in the field of agriculture. It primarily relies on manipulating key growth factors such as extended photoperiod (often 20–24 h of light), optimized temperature regimes and high-intensity artificial lighting to promote rapid plant development and early flowering. These controlled conditions enable multiple generations per year compared to one or two under conventional field conditions. Core methodologies of speed breeding include the use of growth chambers, glasshouses with supplemental lighting and precise regulation of light quality, temperature and humidity. Additionally, high-density planting phenotyping technology, immature seed germination (pigeon pea, chickpea and soybean, cultivation from seeds of oven-dried immature pods, CO 2 supplementation and early seed harvest techniques are commonly employed to maximize throughput. Integration with modern breeding tools such as marker-assisted selection (MAS), genomic selection, genome editing like CRISPR-cas9 (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) , genomics, phenomics, proteomics, doubled haploid technology and AI tools further enhances efficiency by enabling rapid selection of desirable traits. Major applications of speed breeding span crop improvement programs for cereals (e.g., wheat, rice, barley), legumes (e.g., pigeonpea, chickpea), oilseeds (soybean, groundnut) and horticultural crops (Root, Tuber and Banana (RTB) crops). It is particularly valuable for developing varieties with improved yield, disease resistance, abiotic stress tolerance and climate resilience potential to revolutionize crop breeding and enhance agricultural productivity. Plant varieties development with high productive capacity and resilience in wheat (DS Faraday), peanut, chickpea, pea, barley and canola and high-yielding, disease-resistant, climate-resilient varieties of potato like Punjab Potato 101, 102 and 104).Speed breeding also supports functional genomics studies, trait introgression and rapid fixation of desirable alleles. Overall, it represents transformative strategy to meet global food security challenges by significantly reducing the time required to develop improved crop varieties. This review article explores the concept, methods and potential applications of speed breedingand provided valuable insights into its contributions to modern agriculture.