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
programmes. 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 (SSD) and
potential for adaptation to larger-scale crop improvement programs. Cost saving through
light-emitting diode (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.