Speed Breeding and Genomic Selection for Accelerating Legume Improvement

Speed breeding (SB) and genomic selection (GS) are recently developed plant breeding methods that can significantly accelerate the development of improved crops, enhancing their yield, resilience, and nutritional quality, including in legumes. SB employs several strategies, such as cultivating environmentally controlled plants in greenhouses or growth chambers, where light, temperature, and humidity are optimized, allowing several generations of legume crops to be grown in a year. To achieve this, strategies such as altering photoperiod, breaking seed or embryo dormancy, and promoting early seed germination help speed up flowering and seed maturation, thereby increasing the number of generations produced annually. When combined with GS—a genetic approach that predicts a plant’s breeding potential using genomic information obtained through high-throughput genotyping—speed breeding becomes even more effective. Integrating SB and GS enhances breeding efficiency, shortening the generation time needed to develop new legume varieties, and improves selection for complex traits such as drought tolerance and nutrient content, which are often difficult to target through traditional breeding methods. Rapid generation advancement (RGA) further allows breeders to explore diverse genetic combinations, boosting genetic variation in legume crops. Together, these technologies promote sustainable crop improvement by enabling faster breeding cycles, which help legumes adapt more quickly to changing climate conditions and pest challenges, contributing to global food security.