Rice serves as the staple food for many Asian countries. However, it faces a significant threat from various Hemiptera species, including Nilaparvata lugens, Sogatella furcifera, Laodelphax striatellus, and Nephotettix cincticeps, which can cause devastating diseases. These species are economically significant pests of rice. Traditional morphology-based methods have proven inefficient in accurately distinguishing these pests at the species level. In this study, we present a successful approach for designing species-specific primers and their application in both general and multiplex PCR as well as loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assays, widely adopted molecular tools for species identification. Each primer set incorporates a species-specific sequence of at least 2 base pairs in both the forward and reverse primers. These primers have demonstrated exceptional diagnostic accuracy in conventional and multiplex PCR. Additionally, our study showcases the high sensitivity of LAMP, successfully achieving positive amplification with genomic DNA quantities ranging from 100pg to 10pg. In summary, these techniques provide an efficient means of diagnosing planthoppers in a large number of field-collected or individual samples.

The 2-round Delphi survey and Focus Group Interview (FGI) survey method, in this study, are sequentially applied for the level analysis of the high-level radioactive waste (HLW) management technologies, that are classified into transport/storage, site evaluation, and disposal categories. The 2- round Delphi survey was conducted on domestic 56 experts in the HLW field in Korea, and survey answers were managed with questionnaires distributed by e-mail. In the FGI survey, domestic 24 experts from management field were formed into three groups to conduct in-depth interviews. Past research achievements including journal papers, intellectual properties and the expert opinions presented at expert hearing on HLW technology were used as reference materials. As a result of the survey, in this study, the average domestic technology level compared to the leading countries was 83.1% in transport area, 79.6% in storage area, 62.2% in site evaluation area, and 57.4% in disposal area, respectively. When compared to the former level analysis results in 2017, technology level of transport-storage area increased by 8.6%, and the site evaluation-disposal technology area decreased by 7.27%. The highest factor that increase the level of technology in the transport-storage field was due to the increased R&D program resulting on journal papers, intellectual properties. In addition, the decrease factor in the level of technology in the site evaluation-disposal field was mainly due to relatively low R&D program when compared to the leading countries. Suggested method for the level survey can be used to find out the basic data of the lower tech technologies, to estimate the efficient research budgets and to prepare the R&D human resources. With this regards, R&D roadmap can be matured with suggested prediction method for the domestic technology level on HLW.