Sesame is queen of oil seed crops and widely cultivated in Asia and Africa. The aim of this study was to develop a mini sub core set representing the diverse germplasm of sesame and to assess the genetic diversity, population structure and phylogenetic relationship of the resulted sub core set to be used in whole genome resequencing platform. One hundred twelve accessions out of 277 accessions were selected by the PowerCore program. A total of 155 alleles were captured from the 158 alleles detected in the primary core population, and rare alleles and specific alleles were also maintained in the sub core set accessions representing almost 100% of the primary core population. Among the sub core set accessions, four sub populations were observed with some admixture accessions. Although the genetic diversity of Pop-1 which includes most accessions from Korea is relatively lower than that of other three sub populations, it can maintain maximum number of accessions in the sub core set with the same percentage as in the primary core set probably because of the specific features of these accessions. Based on this framework of genetically defined populations, the effective use and conservation management of Sesamum indicum for crop improvement might be possible.

Background: The International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health-core set (ICF-core set) for children and youth (CY) with cerebral palsy (CP) provides a useful conceptual framework and a guide for health care planning and measuring the changes brought by interventions across a multitude of dimensions from body functions to personal activities, social participation, and environmental factors for them. Objects: This single case study was reported to illustrate the use of a goal directed approach in applying the ICF-core set for CY with CP from a physical therapist perspective. Methods: An eleven year old boy with spastic CP, Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) level V, and his mother participated in an evaluation of his functioning state. The intervention goal was set through an interview using the ICF-core set, Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM) and Goal Attainment Scale (GAS). Physical therapy was carried out on an outpatient basis using a goal directed approach for 30 min, 1 time/week during 12 weeks and the boy’s gross motor function was assessed using the Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM)-66 version (item set 2) before and after the intervention. Results: As measured by the boy’s mother, the COPM score showed a meaningful clinical change (performance=mean 3.5, satisfaction=mean 2.5) and the T-score of GAS changed 34.4 after the goal directed approach. The GMFM-66 (item set 2) score changed from 31.8 to 38.7 and evaluation using the ICF-core set displayed improvement in 6 items of activity level between before and after the intervention. Conclusion: The ICF-core set for CY with CP is useful for understanding the overall functioning of CY with this condition and provides an opportunity to share and integrate information and opinions from different disciplines. We consider it as a useful tool in the universal language for the therapy and education of CY with CP.

In order to develop a core set and new corn variety in Korea, we evaluated the morphological characteristics of 194 maize accessions by examining eight quantitative characteristics. On the evaluation of quantitative traits for 194 maize accessions, they showed the morphological variations in tassel length (35.1±5.0 cm), plant height (226.1±33.7 cm), ear height (86.3±22.6 cm), stem diameter (2.3±0.6 cm), leaf width (9.3±1.1 cm), ear length (14.5±2.4 cm), ear row number (14.1±1.9 row), and 100 kernel weight (24.9±4.4 g). The results of principal component analysis (PCA) indicated that the tassel length, plant height, and ear height greatly contributed to positive direction on the first principal component axis. One-hundred kernel weight contributed to negative direction on the second principal component axis. Thus these morphological characteristics, which contributed greatly in the first and second principal components, might be useful for discrimination among 194 maize accessions. In our study, seven accessions, such as IT026357, IT026441, IT027321, IT033271, IT033591, IT033597 and IT124273, particularly were measured high on yield-related traits. Consequently, the 194 maize accessions used in this study could be used as promising materials for maize breeding programs such as development of new hybrid in Korea.

In order to breakthrough upcoming challenges for the food production, the efficient use of rice germplasm would be a indispensible. These rice germplasm, adapted from diverse eco-systems, are undiscovered treasures for rice breeders/researchers, potentially providing a broad array of useful alleles that enrich gene pools of current cultivated rice varieties. Although growing ex-situ conservation efforts are an important for preserving diverse rice genetic resources, the activity on finding the novel and favorable genetic variants from the vast genebank collection is greatly challenging, requiring extensive screening processes. Therefore, rice core collection is a powerful solution to accelerate utilizations of the exotic germplasm of the entire population. In addition, The application of whole genome re-sequencing technology would establish a potent platform for fast forward genetic study, such as genome wide association study (GWAS). The GWAS has been implemented to efficiently identify candidate genes related to various useful agricultural traits in many crop species including rice. Given the significant associations between genetic variations and phenotypic diversity does not require prior knowledge, GWAS using high genome coverage of SNP markers provides a genomics platform to dissect previously unknown adaptive or other useful genetic variation accumulated in plant germplasm resources over the times. Once pinpointing candidate genes, GWAS allows informed choice of parents for QTL analysis based on the haplotype information, along with suggesting targets for following mutagenesis and transgenics. Here, we are to report our current achievements and perspectives from GWAS and post-GWAS undertaken to dissect and exploit useful alleles underlying many agricultural traits from Rice core set, including PHS (Pre-Harvest Sprouting), salt tolerance and disease resistance and so forth. Also, we will introduce the integrated Omics based GWAS case study using transcriptomes, proteomes, metabolomes and ionomes of our rice core set.

In rice (Oryza sativa L.), there is a diversity in flowering time that is strictly genetically regulated by plenty of genes. The floral transition from vegetative to reproductive development is a very important step in the life cycle of a flowering plant. Orthologous genes, which are homologous genes that diverged after a speciation event, generally maintain a similar function in different species. with a McDonald-Kreitman Test (MKT), we examined more than 10,000 orthologous genes between rice (Oryza sativa) and Brachypodium (outgroup), based on different phenotypic groups, to find some fast evolutionary genes of rice flowering time. Three groups with early flowering time (group 1), midium flowering time (group 2) and late flowering time (group 3) were separated and each group was examined for McDonald-Kreitman Test (MKT). Total 70 fast evolutionary genes under a positive selection were found in the three groups, and 14, 42 and 14 genes were specific existed in group 1, 2 and 3, respectively. Annotation of these genes were conducted and the predicted functions were also surveyed. In addition, network analysis of these characterized genes were also investigated to infer related pathways. And also, the association study between the one early flowering factor and the flowering time phenotype was performed and indicated that this gene is significantly correlated with flowering time in rice. These results suggest that using this orthologous based method, we could find some important candidate genes underlying flowering time regulations.

Iron is an essential mineral found in every cell of the human body to make the oxygen-carrying proteins hemoglobin and myoglobin. More than 2 billion people face Fe deficiency. Rice can be a potentially valuable source to supplement that mineral since it is staple food for two-thirds of the world’s population. To bring the nutritional level of the milled product up to that of the whole grain (brown), rice should be enriched with thiamin, niacin and iron. Also iron has important role that absorption from the photosynthetic cells proceeds, chlorophyll synthesis and the growth process of the plant. Orthologous genes, which are homologous genes that diverged after a speciation event, generally maintain a similar function in different species. We applied a McDonald-Kreitman Test (MKT) to examine more than 10,000 orthologous genes between rice (Oryza sativa) and Brachypodium (outgroup) based on different phenotypic groups. This analysis was undertaken to find fast evolutionary genes in rice iron uptake. Three groups were separated based on the phenotype and each group was examined with the outgroup for MKT. Fast evolutionary genes that have a positive selection with FDR ≤ 0.05 were detected at each groups. Annotation of these genes were conducted and the predicted functions were also discussed here. And also, the association study between the candidate gene related to iron uptake phenotype was performed. These results support that using this orthologous based method, we may find some important candidate genes underlying the ion uptake in rice.

Genetic resources play a great role in crop breeding because of containing a broad array of useful genes. Currently, the harder are rice breeders trying to develop new rice cultivars with the improved traits, they are more often handicapped by the limited availability of germplasm resources. Thus, a desirable core or heuristic (HS) set of germplasm with maximum genetic diversity can be usefully exploited to breakthrough the present and future challenges of the rice breeding. As such we previously developed the rice HS sets of 166 diverse accessions out of a total 24,368 rice germplasms. Here, we report a large-scale analysis of the patterns of genome-wide genetic variations accumulated in the HS as well as Korean rice over the time. We characterized a total of about 11.8 millions of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across the rice genome from resequencing a total of 295 rice genomes including 137 HS and 158 KB rice sets, with an average of approximately 10x depth and > 90% coverage. Using about 460,000 high-quality SNPs (HQSNPs), we specified the population structure, confirming our HS set covers all the rice sub-populations. We further traced the relative nucleotide variabilities of HQSNPs and found the level of the diversity was dynamically changing across the KB genome, which reveals the selection history of KB lines in the past and present. In addition, the results of our genome wide association study (GWAS) suggests that our HS can be also a good reservoir of valuable alleles, pinpointing those alleles underlying the important rice agronomical traits. Overall, the resequencing of our HS set re-illuminates the past, present of the germplasm utilization, which will support the Korean rice breeding in the future.

본 연구는 총 50개의 SSR 마커를 이용하여, 찰옥수수 및 종실용 옥수수 핵심집단(찰옥수수 40계통, 종실용 옥수수 40계통)의 자식계통들의 유전적 다양성, 집단구조 및 계통유연관계를 분석하였다. 1. 그 결과 65bp에서 225bp 크기의 범위로 총 242개의 대립단편들을 증폭시켰다. SSR primer들에서 증폭된 대립단편의 수는 최소 2개에서부터 최대 9개까지의 범위로 나타났고, 평균 4.84개가 증폭되었다. 그리고 GD값은 0.420에서 0.8

Colored soybean for cooking with rice have been used traditionally in Korea which is distinguished from other countries. Although many soybean cultivars have been developed for cooking with rice since the launch of the first cultivar Geomgeongkong1 in 1994, the breeding history of soybeans for cooking with rice is not quite long comparing to that of soybean paste/ bean curd and soy-sprout. In addition to developed cultivar, various landrace soybeans have still used for cooking with rice to Korean. This study was performed to select useful breeding materials and to evaluate the diversity of Korean landrace germplasms, especially black and/or green color seed coat soybeans. About five hundred eighty Korean colored soybean landraces were investigated for agricultural traits in experimental field and for DNA diversity using five SSR markers which showed high polymorphism between Korean soybean cultivars in a previous study. PowerCore (v. 1.0) software (http://genebank.rda.go.kr/PowerCore/) was used to analyze diversity of our landraces and to construct core set. In conclusion, we could obtain core set of forty-five germplasms by PowerCore analysis. Satt002 in analysed five SSR markers had twenty-two alleles and well represented diversity of black and/or green color germplasms.