Accelerating plant breeding

• We propose a concept for an in vitro nursery as a tool to reduce cycle time.
• Rapid cycles of meiosis and mitosis would enable multiple generations per year.
• In vitro production and fusion of artificial gametes is crucial for this method.
• Potential applications of rapid cycling are discussed.

The growing demand for food with limited arable land available necessitates that the yield of major food crops continues to increase over time. Advances in marker technology, predictive statistics, and breeding methodology have allowed for continued increases in crop performance through genetic improvement. However, one major bottleneck is the generation time of plants, which is biologically limited and has not been improved since the introduction of doubled haploid technology. In this opinion article, we propose to implement in vitro nurseries, which could substantially shorten generation time through rapid cycles of meiosis and mitosis. This could prove a useful tool for speeding up future breeding programs with the aim of sustainable food production.