The global population is projected to approach 10 billion within the next three decades, placing unprecedented pressure on agricultural systems to deliver higher yields under increasingly unstable climatic conditions. While conventional plant breeding has produced high-yielding and nutritious crop varieties, the process remains slow, often requiring more than a decade due to long crop cycles, seasonal constraints, and extensive field evaluation. Speed breeding has emerged as a transformative strategy to overcome these bottlenecks by manipulating environmental factors such as light intensity, photoperiod, and temperature to accelerate flowering and seed development. This approach enables up to 3?9 generations per year, compared to just 1?2 under traditional breeding. Built upon advances in controlled-environment agriculture and LED lighting technology, speed breeding enhances photosynthetic efficiency and rapid generation turnover. When integrated with modern tools such as single-seed descent, doubled haploidy, marker-assisted selection, and highthroughput phenotyping, speed breeding significantly shortens breeding timelines and improves selection efficiency. As climate change intensifies and food demand rises, speed breeding offers a powerful pathway to deliver improved crop varieties faster than ever before.