Background : Undulatum Rhubarb, commonly produced in domestic, is rhizome of Rheum undulatum L. that belongs to the family Polygonaceae. It also can be used as a substitute of R. palmatum L., R. tanguticum Maximowicz ex Balf., and R. officinale Baillon which completely depend on import system. However, there should be clear clarification among Undulatum Rhubarb and Rhubarb, because Undulatum Rhubarb contains rhaponticin as marker compound that is not indicated at Rhubarb. Some of the recently imported Undulatum Rhubarbs have been found to be Rhubarb. Also, it is known that only Undulatum Rhubarb is cultivated at domestic environment. But some plant origins of Rhubarb are grown in Korea, too. Further study are needed to clarify clear origin between Undulatum Rhubarb and Rhubarb. Thus, we collected some domestically cultivated samples and identified them. Methods and Reseults : Rheum undulatum L., Rhubarb, Rheum tanguticum Maximowicz ex Balf. which were cultivated in Gangwondo Agricultural Research and Extension Services in Cheorwon were collected and anayzed the DNA sequences. We also compared DNA sequences in Rhubarb collected from England and R. rhabarbarum L., R. undulatum L., and R. franzenbachii on NCBI. As a result, two kinds of rhubarb cultivated in the test plantation were identified as R. rhabarbarum and R. officinale. In addition, R. undulatum (plant origin of Undulatum Rhubarb) was identified as Rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum) in England with 99 - 100% identical in nuclear ITS gene region. Conclusion : R. undulatum, plant origin of Undulatum Rhubarb, is reported as synonym of R. rhabarbarum, R. franzenbachii. Rheum speices which are cultivated as tester in Gangwondo Agricultural Research and Extension Services in Cheorwon are estimated as R. undulatum and R. officinale. Therefore, not only Undulatum Rhubarb but Rhubarb could be grown in Korea.

Environmental stresses including drought, extreme temperatures, and high salinity are major factors that severely limit crop productivity worldwide. To overcome yield loss due to these environmental stresses, a large number of researches have been conducted to understand how plants respond to and adapt these environmental stresses. Posttranscriptional regulation as well as transcriptional regulation of gene expression is recognized as a key regulatory process in plant stress responses, and these cellular processes are regulated by diverse RNA-binding proteins (RBPs). Over the last years, we have extensively investigated the functional roles of RBPs that harbor an RNA-recognition motif at the N-terminal half and a glycine-rich region at the C-terminal half (glycine-rich RNA-binding proteins, GRPs), zinc finger-containing GRP, and cold shock domain proteins (CSDPs) in Arabidopsis thaliana, rice (Oryza sativa), wheat (Triticum aestivum), and rapeseed (Brasicca napus) under stress conditions. Our comparative analysis demonstrated that certain family members display RNA chaperone function during stress adaptation process in monocotyledonous plants as well as in dicotyledonous plants. These findings point to the importance of the regulation of mRNA metabolism in plant response to environmental stresses and shed new light on the practical application of these RBPs to develop stress-tolerant transgenic crops.