Water dropwort(Oenanthe javanica) is grown usually in submerged paddy field and is widely used as additive in foods like Kimchi, fish soup. However, its cultivation in the under submerged cultivation has been known to cause the reduction in quality of water dropwort plants mainly due to the presence of dirt and some parasites like leeches and water animals. Thus, this study was conducted to evaluate a wetland cultivation(WLC) of water dropwort plants compared to the conventional submerged cultivation(SBC) in the greenhouse paddy field conditions. WLC and SBC treatments maintained water levels to the depth of less than 5cm and about 20cm, respectively. Vegetative stem sections were planted in September and plants were harvested in early April. The results showed that height and yield of water dropwort plants were higher in SBC than in WLC. Total yield per 10a in WLC was 12.3% lower than in SBC (2.34 vs 2.63 tons). However, the useful quality factors such as vitamin C, inorganic nutrients, chlorophyll, and anthocyanin contents were found to be considerably higher in WLC. That is Ca, K, Mg, and anthocyanin contents in the stem were increased 235%, 6%, 143% and 290%, respectively, compared to those of SBC plants. The length of underground internodes from WLC elongated about 2 times more than that of SBC, resulting in an increase in plant length and advance in harvest time. On the other hand, water dropwort plants with wetland cultivation can be produced with good cleanliness and quality, but the cultivation system should be optimized and developed to get more yield the same as SBC.

Compared to wide ranges of genetic variation of natural populations, very limited Miscanthus cultivar has been released. This study was the first report on the development of Miscanthus cultivar by means of radiation breeding. Seeds of M. sinensis were initially exposed to gamma rays of 250 Gy for 24 h, generated from a 60Co gamma-irradiator. The irradiated seeds were sown and then the highly tiller-producing mutants were selected for this study. Biomass-related parameters including tiller number, plant height, stem diameter, and leaf number were measured. Ploidy level and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) were investigated to characterize the mutants compared to wild type (WT) Miscanthus. Plant height and tiller number were negatively related, where multi-tillering mutants were relatively short after 4 month growth. However stem diameter and leaf number were greater in mutants. All the materials used in this study were diploid, implying that the mutants with greater tiller numbers and stem diameter were not likely related to polyploidization. Based on the sequence of ITS regions, the mutants demonstrated base changes from the gamma irradiation where G+C content (%) was decreased in the ITS1, but increased in ITS2 when compared to WT sequence. ITS2 region was more variable than in ITS1 in the mutants, which collectively allows identification of the mutants from WT. Those mutants having enhanced tillers and allelic variations might be used as breeding materials for enhanced biomass-producing Miscanthus cultivars.

Inweolbyeo is a japonica rice (Oryza sativa L.) variety developed by Unbong Substation, National Honam Agricultural Experiment Station, RDA in 1998. It was selected from progenies from a cross between Fukei 127 and Unbongbyeo by pedigree breeding method.