During the last decade, considerable progress has been made to understand the molecular mechanisms of M. grisea infection in rice plants and 10 rice blast R genes have been identified and characterized via map-based cloning methods. In case of rice germplasm, the genetic backgrounds of each germplasm accessions are not uniform and the evaluation for pathogenicity is difficult. To solve these problems, we applied the single resistance gene markers to rice germplasm accessions. A molecular survey was conducted to identify the presence of major blast resistance (R) gene in 363 accessions of Korea landrace rice germplasm. The results revealed that the resistance gene Pik-p (100%), Pib (98%), Pi-d(t)2 (98%) and Piz (76%) were widely observed in tested rice germplasm, but Pita-2, Pik and Pi39 gene were identified in less than 10 accessions. Most of landrace contain the four or five different resistant genes, but these results was not consist of field nursery screening. 13 accessions were shown the blast resistance in field nursery screening and Pik-p, Pib, Pi-d(t)2 and Piz genes were observed in these accessions. The evaluation results of blast resistance genes in rice germplasm will help in breeding of multi disease resistant varieties.

It is very crucial to evaluate the genetic diversity of peanut genetic resources for identification of peanut germplasm accessions and variety improvement. Cultivated peanut generally has two subspecies, hypogaea and fastigiata. In this study, we identified peanut into three plant types, virginia (var. hypogaea), spanish (var. vulgaris), and valencia (var. fastigiata). Former one belongs to ssp. hypogaea and latter two are involved in ssp. fastigiata. Twenty SSR markers were used to assess the genetic variation of three sets, hypogaea, vulgaris, and fastigiata, respectively. Out of variety-specific SSR primers tried in this study, ten pairs of SSR primers showed polymorphisms. Each accession could be identified by a specific set of polymorphic SSR primers, and allele number was evaluated among accessions, with an average of 6.7 in var. hypogaea and 5.4 in var. vulgaris and fastigiata. For evaluation of genetic diversity, gene diversity ranged from 0.336 to 0.844 and PIC (polymorphism information contents) ranged from 0.324 to 0.827 were investigated. Dendrograms based on genetic distances were constructed, which showed the existence of three different clusters. And these three different clusters might be associated with the genes involved in three plant types. The results also suggested that there were plentiful SSR polymorphisms among peanut germplasm accessions in RDA (Rural Development Administration, Korea) Genebank and SSRs might play an important role in evaluating peanut accessions and cultivar improvement.

The dechlorination of chlorinated methanes by iron powder and palladium coated iron (Pd/Fe) was studied in batch experiments. Iron powder dechlorinated carbon tetrachloride (CT) with a half-life of 4 days. Three chloromethane was found as major product and less chlorinated daughters. Mass balance found was to be about 93-99%. Pd/Fe showed very enhanced reactivity for CT in comparing with plain iron. The major dechlorination products of CT were also less chlorinated methanes with Pd/Fe. Pd/Fe also degrade the produced less chlorinated compounds. Sequential reactions were occurred on Pd/Fe. As the Pd/Fe content increased, the reaction rate was increased linearly.