Combining speed breeding with traditional and genomics‐assisted breeding for crop improvement

Abstract

Accelerated crop growth strategy innovations are required as we reach saturation peaks regarding the productivity of major food crops. Speed breeding (SB) is one of the most promising technologies adopted for this purpose. SB hastens crop production by reducing plant growth and development, breeding time and swift generation advancement. Prolonged daily light exposure shortens the life cycle in some long-day or day-neutral plants leading to early seed harvest. This approach is best suited for controlled environment prebreeding/breeding activities and analysed for several crop species. SB can be integrated with different traditional and advanced genomicsassisted breeding technologies like marker-assisted selection (MAS), genomic selection (GS), pollen-based selection (PBS), overexpression/knock-down transgenics and genome editing to achieve more precise and faster results on translational genetic enhancement. This review will discuss the approaches and strategies adopted for the SB and its potential to integrate existing crop improvement technologies to attain more efficient outcomes on major food crops' varietal improvement.

Investigating the genetic control of plant development under speed breeding conditions

“…To our knowledge this is the first time that the underpinning genetic control of speed breeding has been explored. Various studies have described the benefits of speed breeding (Ahmar et al, 2020; Bhatta et al, 2021; Bohra et al, 2020; Pandey et al, 2022; Samantara et al, 2022; Song et al, 2022; Wanga et al, 2021) and optimised protocols for the deployment of speed breeding (Cazzola et al, 2020; Chiurugwi et al, 2019; Fang et al, 2021; Watson et al, 2018; J. M. Hickey et al, 2017; Mobini et al, 2020; Samineni et al, 2020; Schilling et al, 2023) but the genetic basis of plant development under such conditions remains unexplored.…”

“…To our knowledge this is the first time that the underpinning genetic control of speed breeding has been explored. Various studies have described the benefits of speed breeding (Ahmar et al, 2020;Bhatta et al, 2021;Bohra et al, 2020;Pandey et al, 2022;Samantara et al, 2022;Song et al, 2022;Wanga et al, 2021) and optimised protocols for the deployment of speed breeding (Cazzola et al, 2020;Chiurugwi et al, 2019;Fang et al, 2021;Mobini et al, 2020;Samineni et al, 2020;Schilling et al, 2023) but the genetic basis of plant development under such conditions remains unexplored. In this study we adopted a GWAS approach to unravel the genetic control of speed breeding in a barley NAM population grown under two growth conditions, one with a photoperiod of 22 hours of light 2 hours of darkness (SB) and the other on 16 hours of light and 8 hours of darkness (NB).…”

“…Speed breeding can be integrated with other technologies to achieve different breeding objectives such marker assisted selection (MAS) for simple traits as genomic selection (GS) for complex traits (L. T. Hickey et al, 2017, 2019; Pandey et al, 2022). A body of research has advanced speed breeding protocols aiming to reduce the breeding cycle in long- and short-day plants using controlled environments (Cazzola et al, 2020; Chiurugwi et al, 2019; Fang et al, 2021; Watson et al, 2018; J.…”

“…Developing an efficient speed breeding protocol involves optimising several environmental factors, with a key one being the exposure to prolonged photoperiods for long-day species. Speed breeding can be integrated with other technologies to achieve different breeding objectives such marker assisted selection (MAS) for simple traits as genomic selection (GS) for complex traits (L. T. Hickey et al, , 2019Pandey et al, 2022). A body of research has advanced speed breeding protocols aiming to reduce the breeding cycle in long-and short-day plants using controlled environments (Cazzola et al, 2020;Chiurugwi et al, 2019;Fang et al, 2021;Mobini et al, 2020;Samineni et al, 2020;Schilling et al, 2023).…”

Heritage genetics for adaptation to marginal soils in barley

“…Established techniques, such as marker-assisted selection, marker-assisted backcrossing, genomic selection, high-throughput phenotyping, and speed breeding can accelerate plant breeding (Figure 1) [70][71][72]. The increasing availability of these methods and online informational resources provides the potential to mine alleles in locally adapted landraces and to use this information to generate improved crops.…”