Is plant variety registration keeping pace with speed breeding techniques?

Abstract

Recent innovations in breeding technologies have reduced the timeframe to develop improved plant varieties compared to conventional breeding processes. Technologies like speed breeding, or rapid generation advancement, may also accelerate the process of statutory variety registration. Within this procedure, improved varieties are required to satisfy distinctness, uniformity and stability (DUS) criteria to establish the unique identity of a given submission during the variety registration process. The DUS standard also provides a solid basis for seed certification, plant breeders’ rights, as well as variety maintenance throughout commercial lifespan of varieties. Currently, the overall timeline of variety registration may vary from 2 to 4 years, depending on crop type and country. In this article, we propose the concept of ‘speed DUS testing’: a rapid phenotype-based method, which could be integrated with approaches that take advantage of DNA markers. We compare methods and discuss how DUS testing could be modernized to fast-track variety registration.