The main challenge in global crop production is the need to achieve a higher yield to meet the increasing demands from agricultural industries, especially under volatile climatic conditions. Developing next-generation barley varieties is essential to address the issues of changing climate, increasing population, and new biotic and abiotic stresses. The conventional breeding program takes 10-12 years to develop new barley varieties. These days, the speed breeding approach is used for rapid generation advancement of segregating populations towards homozygosity which will facilitate genetic gain for key traits and the rapid development of improved varieties. Speed breeding uses an artificial environment with enhanced light duration to create long daylight regimes to speed up the breeding cycles and reduce the time to release a cultivar by at least three years. In this talk, I will present some of the results achieved through the speed breeding approach and the future outlook of the barley breeding program at the Ottawa Research and Development Centre.

Keywords: Speed breeding, conventional breeding, breeding cycle, genomics election, genetic gain

Author: Raja Khanal
Ottawa Research and Development Centre, Ottawa, Canada