This study was conducted to determine the appropriate seeding dates by verifying the difference in winter survival and productivity of alfalfa according to fall sowing dates in the central area of South Korea. The experiment was conducted for 2 years (2020 and 2021) at the field in the Department of Animal Resources Development, NIAS located in Cheonan. Sowing dates started from September 18 to November 8 with 10 days of intervals during 2020 and 2021; SO1 (September 18), SO2 (September 28), SO3 (October 8), SO4 (October 18), SO5 (October 28), and SO6 (November 8). After sowing, the winter survival rate was measured in the spring of the following year, and the dry matter yield was measured by harvesting at 10% flowering and harvesting five times a year. SO6 failed to winter survival, and SO5 also had a lower winter survival rate than SO1~4 (p<0.05). The average annual dry matter yield of alfalfa linearly decreased with delaying sowing dates (p<0.05). The feed value did not differ in the same year by delaying the sowing date in the same year. These results suggest that sowing date should be started before October 18 to increase winter survival and productivity of alfalfa in the central area of South Korea.

Despite that porcine spermatogonial stem cells (pSSCs) have been regarded as a practical tool for preserving eternally genetic backgrounds derived from pigs with high performance in the economic traits or phenotypes of specific human diseases, there were no reports about precise definition of niche conditions promoting proliferation and maintenance of pSSCs. Accordingly, we tried to determine niche conditions supporting proliferation and maintenance of undifferentiated pSSCs for short-term. For these, undifferentiated pSSCs were progressively cultured in different composition of culture medium, seeding density of pSSCs, type of feeder cells and concentration of growth factors, and then total number of and alkaline phosphatase (AP) activity of pSSCs were investigated at post-6 day culture. As the results, the culture of 4x105 pSSCs on mitotically in activated 2x105 STO cells in the mouse embryonic stem cell culture medium (mESCCM) supplemented with 30 ng/ml glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) was identified as the best niche condition supporting effectively the short-term maintenance of undifferentiated pSSCs. Moreover, the optimized short-term culture system will be a basis for developing long-term culture system of pSSCs in the following researches.