Speed breeding technique is start of new green revolution

Like & share this news article:
News

  Posted by: electime      30th January 2018

Teams at the John Innes Centre, University of Queensland and University of Sydney, have developed a new technology in which the use of a glasshouse or an artificial environment and enhanced lighting can create intense day-long regimes and speed up the search for better crops.

The team has achieved wheat generation from seed to seed in only eight weeks, which means it is now possible to grow six generations of wheat every year– this is three times more than the current shuttle-breeding technique adopted by breeders and researchers.

Dr Brande Wulff of the John Innes Centre says of the news: “Globally, we face a huge challenge in breeding higher yielding and more resilient crops. Being able to cycle through more generations in less time, will allow us to more rapidly create and test genetic combinations and find the best combinations for different environments.”

The need to address the impacts of climate change has been growing over many years as the improvement rates of several staple crops have fallen and the demand to feed the global population has rose.

Those at the John Innes Centre have said that this technique uses fully controlled growth environments and can also be scaled up to work in a standard glasshouse. It also uses LED lights optimised to aid photosynthesis in intensive regimes of up to 22 hours per day.

Ruth Bryant, Wheat Pathologist at RAGT Seeds Ltd, Essex, UK, said: “Breeders are always looking for ways to speed up the process of getting a variety to market so we are really interested in the concept of speed breeding. We are working closely with Dr Wulff’s group at the John Innes Centre to develop this method in a commercial setting.”