In order to cope with the recent global warming and climate change that is projected to have a grave impact on agriculture worldwide, we will direct our focus on developing crops tolerant to multiple abiotic stresses including drought, cold and heat, with the following research activities conducted by three different research groups including an international research team at IRRI.
1) Development of heat/cold tolerant rice variety : Major genes conferring heat tolerance and cold resistance in rice will be identified by comparative transcriptome analyses and new molecular markers will be developed based upon these data. EMS mutagenesis and proteomics analyses will accompany this approach to supplement this gene identification and marker development efforts. Once reliable markers are obtained in this way, new varieties of heat/cold tolerant japonica rice will be bred through introgression of these genes.
2) Development of drought/heat tolerant rice variety : Through QTL mapping conducted on RILs between a drought resistant line and an elite line, genes conferring drought/heat tolerance will be identified and molecular markers will be developed using SNP/GBS genotyping methods. Using these markers, new rice varietis with drought/heat tolerance will be bred by employing marker assisted selection (MAS) as well as marker assisted backcross (MABC).
3) Identification of genes involved in multiple stress responses in ginseng and brassica : Molecular breeding of stress tolerance traits in ginseng and brassica is not well established to date. Taking advantage of the ginseng whole genome sequence data information and other comparative genomics approaches, members of the stress-response transcription factor family CBF/DREB will be identified and their functional analyses will be performed in ginseng and brassica using transcriptome profiling of both wild type and transgenic plants including the adventitious root-derived transgenic ginseng.
Major Publications:
- Lee, J., W. Jiang, et al. (2011). “Shotgun proteomic analysis for detecting differentially expressed proteins in the reduced culm number rice.” Proteomics 11(3): 455-468.
- Ji, H., S. R. Kim, et al. (2010). “Inactivation of the CTD phosphatase-like gene OsCPL1 enhances the development of the abscission layer and seed shattering in rice.” The Plant journal 61(1): 96-106.
- Chin JH, Gamuyao R, Dalid C, Bustamam M, Prasetiyono J, Moeljopawiro S, Wissuwa M, Heuer S (2011) Developing rice with high yield under P-deficiency: Pup1 sequence and application. Plant Physiology 156: 1-15.
- Hong-Il Choi, Nam Hoon Kim et al. (2011) Development of Reproducible EST-derived SSR Markers and their application for genomics and breeding of Panax ginseng Journal of Ginseng Research 35(4): 399-412.