We bred a new green-kerneled glutinous rice variety that can be cultivated in the whole area of Korea, because only one native green-kerneled glutinous rice cultivar, “aengdongchalbyeo” has been cultivated in the southern coastal area due to its late heading. The seeds of “aengdongchalbyeo”were irradiated with 200 Gy of gamma ray in 1995. A promising mutant variety, “ogwonchalbyeo”(“onnong 17” was selected through line selection and regional yield trials. In particular, the new variety revealed at the earlier mid of August compared to that of “aengdongchalbyeo” the early of September, and it was considerably tolerant to a field lodging due to its shortened culm length. Also, “ogwonchalbyeo”had a higher ripened grain ratio and 1,000 grain weight compared to the original variety. The brown grain yield of the new variety was about 5.40 MT/ha, which was 11.3% higher than that of the original variety, in the regional yield trials at 3 different fields during 2000∼2001. The brown and milled grains of the new rice variety contained 20 to 65% higher amount of total amino acids, respectively than that of the original and two checks. For chlorophyll -a, -b and total chlorophyll, the new variety showed nearly two-fold higher than the checks, and for the carotenoid, it had 5.3 –7.6 times higher amount. These results showed that the new variety can be cultivated as a special green-kerneled glutinous rice with high functional compounds.

It was previously pointed out that mutation is the ultimate source of variation. Adequate variation is needed for plant breeding if there is a limitation in natural genetic resources. When the ionizing radiation has been known to cause chromosomal and genomic alternations, it is widely used for inducing mutagenesis. The electron beam as an ionizing radiation is the principal physical mutagens that induces mutation and effectively used in plant breeding. Since dose-response relationships of electron beam in plant species are rarely known, we investigated the seed germination rate and early seedling growth of irradiated seeds of creeping bentgrass (Agrostis palustris Huds., cv Penn-A1) with various electron beam irradiating conditions (1, 1.3, 2 MeV at both 0.03 mA and 0.06 mA with dose of 100 Gy (Gray) and 0.03, 1, 1.3, 2 MeV at 0.03 mA with dose of 200 Gy, respectively) using electron accelerator at Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute. The growth parameters in terms of shoot length, primary root length, and secondary root length showed similar response between 0.06 / 1 (mA / MeV) at 100 Gy and 0.03 / 0.3 (mA / MeV) at 200 Gy. Bentgrass seed germination was mainly affected by the intensity of irradiated dose (Gray). Germination rate was lowered as the irradiated dose increased. On the other hand, early seedling growth was mainly governed not by the dose of radiation but by voltage.