Drought and salinity are two major environmental factors determining plant productivity that due to their high magnitude of impact and wide distribution. The regulatory circuits include stress sensors, signaling pathways comprising a network of protein-protein reactions, transcription factors and promoters, and finally the output proteins or metabolites. Plant receptor-like kinases (RLKs) are transmembrane proteins family, are predicted to be major components of the signaling pathways that allow plants to respond to diverse environmental and development condition. Subfamily of Catharanthus roseus RLK1-like kinases (CrRLK1Ls) is a novel type of RLK, was identified in Arabidopsis with 17 members carrying a putative extracellular carbonhydrate-binding malectin-like domain. To study the function of CrRLK1Ls subfamily in rice which is a most widely consumed staple food, we produced the phylogenomic data with the integration of microarray-based anatomical and stress expression profiling data to the context of rice CrRLK1Ls family phylogenic tree. The expression profiling data are based on a large number of public microarray data such as 1150 Affymetrix arrays and 209 Agilent 44K arrays. Chromosomal localization of CrRLK1Ls reveals that three of 16 genes were tandem duplicated. Subsequently, we identified 7 genes that showed circadian regulation pattern and three genes of them simultaneously response to drought stress: two were down-regulated and one was up-regulated. Functional gene network development mediated by these stress responsible genes might be an useful foundation to explain the molecular mechanism of stress response mediated by this gene family.

Drought and salinity are two major environmental factors determining plant productivity that due to their high magnitude of impact and wide distribution. The regulatory circuits include stress sensors, signaling pathways comprising a network of protein-protein reactions, transcription factors and promoters, and finally the output proteins or metabolites. Plant receptor-like kinases (RLKs) are transmembrane proteins family, are predicted to be major components of the signaling pathways that allow plants to respond to diverse environmental and development condition. Subfamily of Catharanthus roseus RLK1-like kinases (CrRLK1Ls) is a novel type of RLK, was identified in Arabidopsis with 17 members carrying a putative extracellular carbonhydrate-binding malectin-like domain. To study the function of CrRLK1Ls subfamily in rice which is a most widely consumed staple food, we produced the phylogenomic data with the integration of microarray-based anatomical and stress expression profiling data to the context of rice CrRLK1Ls family phylogenic tree. The expression profiling data are based on a large number of public microarray data such as 1150 Affymetrix arrays and 209 Agilent 44K arrays. Chromosomal localization of CrRLK1Ls reveals that three of 16 genes were tandem duplicated. Subsequently, we identified 7 genes that showed circadian regulation pattern and three genes of them simultaneously response to drought stress: two were downregulated and one was up-regulated. Functional gene network development mediated by these stress responsible genes might be an useful foundation to explain the molecular mechanism of stress response mediated by this gene family.

In order to examine the possibility that oil seed rape could be used as a forage fodder crop and to select the most suitable variety of forage rape at the southern area of Korea, two varieties of oil seed rape currently grown for oil production and six introduced varieties of forage rape with relatively high yield and high nutritional value were grown at the same condition their and yield components were observed. Forage rape was superior to oil seed rape in terms of yield components, plant fresh weight and plant dry mater weight. Velox was superior to any other variety of forage rape in these characters. When plant dry matter weight of the rape was subdivided into four components such as a main stem, branch stems, main stem leaves and branch leaves, contribution of these components to plant dry matter weight was in the order of branch stems, branch leaves, the main stem and main stem leaves. Dry matter percentage of the rape ranged from 9.32 to 11.08 percent, which was somewhat low value. There was no significant difference between two groups of the rape in terms of dry matter percentage. Velox showed somewhat higher value in dry matter percentage.

In order to examine the possibility that oil seed rape could be used as a forage fodder crop and to select the most suitable variety of forage rape at the southern area of Korea, two varieties of oil seed rape currently grown for oil production and six introduced varieties of forage rape with relatively high yield and high nutritional value were grown at the same condition and their nutritional value were observed. Generally, rape was considered as a useful forage fodder crop with high content of crude protein and low contents of NDF, ADF, hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin. Differences in mean values of the above characters between two groups of rape were not statistically significant. Velox showed significantly higher content of crude protein and significantly lower contents of NDF, ADF, hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin compared with other varieties of forage rape. Rape was relatively high in IVDMD compared with other forage fodder crops, and forage rape was more or less higher in IVDMD and DDMM than oil seed rape. Velox was the highest in IVDMD and DDMM among the varieties of forage rape in this experiment.