• Horticultural Science & Technology
• /
• v.32 no.6
• /
• pp.745-752
• /
• 2014

Chinese cabbage (Brassica rapa L. ssp. pekinensis) is an economically important vegetable crop as a source of the traditional food Kimchi in Korea. Although many varieties exhibiting desirable traits have been developed by the conventional selective breeding approach, breeding related to abiotic or biotic stresses, such as a particular pests or diseases, or tolerance to climatic conditions, is likely to be slow. This could be helped by an efficient method for selection from various, rapidly-evolved genetic resources on the basis of molecular markers. In particular, the Brassica genome sequencing project enables genome-wide discovery of genes or genetic variants associated with agricultural traits. We here discuss the recent progress in the field of Chinese cabbage breeding with regard to the application of molecular markers.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
• /
• v.37 no.2
• /
• pp.166-173
• /
• 2010

The purpose of functional genome research is to identify biological function of useful gene and to give an agricultural value in plant biotechnology. Brassica rapa is an economic crop which recorded 1,000 billion won of domestic market and 100 million dollar of exports and it produces 2.5 million ton in 50,000 ha as a major ingredient of representative Korean food, Kimchi. Furthermore, it is very important crop economically and commercially because Korea is major seed exporter. The fact that Multinational Brassica Genome Project (MBGP) was launched and Arabidopsis thaliana, affiliated to same genus with B. rapa, has been fully sequenced activated functional genome research of B. rapa. Besides new technologies related to gene function analysis keep developing, many results are reporting every year by international research including Korea. This review paper introduces development of Chinese cabbage mutants which is a first step in functional genome research, variant phenotypes of mutants, flanking DNA analysis in B. rapa genome, gene identification, gene analysis using microarray, and representative researches.

• Horticultural Science & Technology
• /
• v.34 no.1
• /
• pp.112-121
• /
• 2016

Development of genetically-modified (GM) crops enables the introduction of new traits to the plant to confer characteristics such as disease resistance, herbicide resistance and human health-promoting bioactivity. Successful commercialization of newly developed GM crops requires stable inheritance of integrated T-DNA and newly introduced traits through the multiple generations. This study was carried out to confirm the stable inheritance of the integrated T-DNA in $T_1$ and $T_2$ transgenic Chinese cabbage (Brassica rapa ssp. pekinensis) that was genetically modified to increase concentrations of phenylethylisothiocyanate (PEITC), which is a potential anti-carcinogenic phytochemical. For this purpose, the IGA 1-3 ($T_1$ generation) and IGA 1-3-5 ($T_2$ generation) lines were selected by PCR and a IGA 1-3 transgenic plant ($T_1$ generation) was analyzed to confirm the T-DNA insertion site in the Chinese cabbage genome by VA-TAIL PCR. The results of this study showed that the introduced T-DNA in IGA 1 line was stably inherited to the next generations without any variations in terms of the structure of the transgenes, and this line also showed the expected transgene function that resulted in increased concentration of PEITC through the multiple generations. Finally, we confirmed the increased QR activity in IGA 1 $T_1$ and $T_2$ transgenic lines, which indicates an enhanced potential anti-carcinogenic bioactivity and its stable inheritance in IGA1 $T_1$ and $T_2$ transgenic lines.