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Controlled Environment Ag - Coalition

Speed Breeding and Biotech in Controlled Environments

Plant breeding is essential to increasing plant productivity and food production.

Using controlled environment (CE) technology, we are working to reduce the breeding time of crops by optimizing the environment at different stages of plant breeding, including transformation, tissue culture, ex-vitro establishment and seed-to-seed cycles.

Modern molecular tools for breeding provide possibilities for introducing innovated plant traits into current agronomic crops. 

This transformative research project is funded through industry membership in the Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) Coalition.

Introducing new traits into existing crops and breeding new crops takes a long time.

The Plan Forward

  • Develop new methods for speed breeding crops in a controlled environment
  • Engineering: System integration for proper light, CO2, temperature, air flow and humidity deployment
  • Plant Sciences: Plant physiological responses to the environment 
  • Molecular Biology: Plant transformation, organogenesis, and plant breeding

Our collaboration with breeders, molecular biologists, and CE scientists will contribute towards the rapid development of new crop traits.

Current Collaborators 

North Carolina State University

BASF Corporation
GE Lighting