Prime Minister Narendra Modi dedicated IRRI’s new state-of-the-art Speed Breeding facility designed by Saveer Biotech Limited. This facility was established at the IRRI South Asia Regional Centre (ISARC) in Varanasi. Researchers can grow multiple generations of plants in a specially designed Saver’s Victor Proof Speed Breeding Technology Greenhouse, as instead of just one or two generations in the field. This facility, which we built in just two years, will speed up the breeding of new crop varieties, allowing Indian farmers to increase their incomes while becoming less vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The facility can advance 39,200 rice plants (at a time) for 4-5 generations per year, compared to only 1-2 generations under normal conditions.
According to estimates, speed breeding can cut the time it takes to develop new varieties by 2 to 4 years. This facility will assist ISARC in developing bio fortified, low GI, and resilient rice varieties at a faster rate. Our Speed breeding facility is a novel approach among plant breeders for developing better cultivars in a short period of time. This method involves manipulating the environmental conditions in which crop genotypes are grown in order to speed up flowering and seed set. Improve crop yield, quality, disease resistance, drought and frost tolerance, and other important characteristics. Speed breeding has been critical in increasing crop production to meet the ever-increasing food demand. The main goal of this facility is to increase the number of crop generations per year, increase the rate of genetic gain, and reduce the varietal breeding time from 12 years to 6 years.
“Recent achievement of IRRI – SARC ,Varanasi centre – New varieties of rice developed in this facility are proven to deal with the climate change & rapid generation advancement”
