Our lab has transferred its SpeedSeed Technology(TRL8) to UrbanKisaan Farms Private Limited, Hyderabad, through a non-exclusive licensing agreement. This technology is developed at NIPGR New Delhi. SpeedSeed enables accelerated generation advancement in chickpea. #BRIC-NIPGR#DBT#Speedbreeding

14: The technology is also the subject of an Indian provisional patent application, supporting its future commercialization and wider deployment.

13: This work has been published as "SPROUT: Rapid generation advancement enabled phenotyping platform for chickpea improvement" in Plant Stress (2026, Volume 21, Article 101426).

12: The technology has significant potential for adoption by research institutions, universities, seed companies, greenhouse manufacturers, & the controlled-environment agriculture industry, thereby strengthening India's capabilities in crop innovation, & sustainable agriculture.

11: Developed entirely in India, SPROUT provides an indigenous technological solution for crop improvement, seed production systems, and agricultural biotechnology.

10: SPROUT supports germplasm evaluation, transgenic and genome-edited line advancement, wild accession maintenance, controlled-environment phenotyping for multiple traits, accelerated breeder seed multiplication, and green seed production for bio-manufacturing.

9: Environmental parameters, including light spectrum, photoperiod, temperature, humidity, and imaging schedules, can be independently programmed, allowing to be tailored for diverse crop improvement objectives and integrated into existing controlled-environment phenotyping.

8: This led to the identification of the first three chickpea mutant lines exhibiting resistance to the combined stress, a major production constraint in chickpea. A key strength of SPROUT is its modular and customizable design.

7: Using SPROUT, researchers established a rapid screening pipeline for combined drought and dry root rot stress and evaluated a large EMS mutant population with nearly a six-fold reduction in screening time.

6: Unlike conventional growth facilities, SPROUT integrates RGA with high-throughput trait evaluation in a single modular platform. It incorporates customized field-derived soil mixtures, field-mimic disease screening plots, and RGB and thermal imaging systems.

5: The protocol was successfully validated across genetically diverse chickpea genotypes, including cultivated varieties and wild accessions, demonstrating its robustness and broad applicability for breeding and crop improvement programmes.

4: At the core of SPROUT is SpeedSeed, a newly developed RGA protocol that reduces the chickpea seed-to-seed cycle to ~ 40 days, enabling 8–10 generations per year under controlled conditions without compromising plant vigour, seed quality, or yield.

3: The platform enables breeding acceleration and trait screening within a single workflow, addressing one of the major bottlenecks in crop improvement—the long generation cycle and seasonal dependence that slow breeding, genetic studies, and trait discovery.

2: SPROUT is an integrated, low-cost, high-throughput controlled-environment platform that combines rapid generation advancement (RGA) with precision phenotyping while recreating field-like conditions for chickpea improvement.

1: 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 SPROUT- Ourteam at BRIC–NIPGR, New Delhi, have developed SPROUT (SpeedSeed Phenotyping and Resource Optimization for Unified Trait-analysis).

3: The platform enables breeding acceleration and trait screening within a single workflow, addressing one of the major bottlenecks in crop improvement—the long generation cycle and seasonal dependence that slow breeding, genetic studies, and trait discovery.

2: SPROUT is an integrated, low-cost, high-throughput controlled-environment platform that combines rapid generation advancement (RGA) with precision phenotyping while recreating field-like conditions for chickpea improvement.