ABSTRACT
Crop improvement programs are enhanced regularly by introducing new technologies to produce enough for human consumption in the changing climatic conditions. One such recent approach as inspired by NASA’s extraterrestrial experiments is “speed breeding.” The scientists have developed the speed breeding platform where crops can be grown at a faster rate in controlled conditions as compared with natural seasonal cycles. As speed breeding shortens the crop generation time, this strategy can be used for various research studies as well as breeding programs. The benefits harnessed from speed breeding are enormous over conventional breeding approaches. In this chapter, we describe in detail about speed breeding, how it was developed, methods used for speed breeding, how it functions, and where can it be applied for crop improvement.
