• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.15-25
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• 2008

Social and scientific changes, i.e., global warming, desertification, pollution, biodiversity, bioenergy, plant variety protection, biotechnology, timber demand, reforestation in North Korea, and etc., were reviewed for new strategy of forest tree breeding in Korea. Diversified breeding goals, globalization of breeding target species, multidisciplinary research approaches, manpower networking, establishment of new administrative and research units in KFS and KFRI were proposed. Principles suggested for new tree breeding strategy are: 1) multi-disciplinary approach in settlement of objectives, breeding methods, and etc., 2) expansion of target trees including foreign species, 3) fulfillment of both domestic and international demands for forest tree breeding, 4) establishment of breeding program well-grounded on genetic resources conservation, 5) acknowledgement of breeding products (i.e., variety, technique, gene, and etc.) as goods, and 6) provision of more research opportunities for young scientists. Lastly, ongoing tree breeding project in Indonesia and NTFP R&D Center at the College of Forest and Environmental Sciences, Kangwon National University were introduced as examples of desirable breeding projects based on target species diversification, multidisciplinary approach, and manpower networking.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.425-441
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• 2010

Forages are the backbone of sustainable agriculture. They includes a wide variety of plant species ranging from grasses, such as tall fescue and bermudagrass, to herbaceous legumes, such as alfalfa and white clover. Abiotic stresses, especially salinity, drought, temperature extremes, high photon irradiance, and levels of inorganic solutes, are the limiting factors in the growth and productivity of major cultivated forage crops. Given the great complexity of forage species and the associated difficulties encountered in traditional breeding methods, the potential from molecular breeding in improving forage crops has been recognized. Plant engineering strategies for abiotic stress tolerance largely rely on the gene expression for enzymes involved in pathways leading to the synthesis of functional and structural metabolites, proteins that confer stress tolerance, or proteins in signaling and regulatory pathways. Genetic engineering allows researchers to control timing, tissue-specificity, and expression level for optimal function of the introduced genes. Thus, the use of either a constitutive or stress-inducible promoter may be useful in certain cases. In this review, we summarize the recent progress made towards the development of transgenic forage plants with improved tolerance to abiotic stresses.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.772-784
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• 2012

Marker-assisted gene pyramiding aims to produce individuals with superior economic traits according to the optimal breeding scheme which involves selecting a series of favorite target alleles after cross of base populations and pyramiding them into a single genotype. Inspired by the science of evolutionary computation, we used the metaphor of hill-climbing to model the dynamic behavior of gene pyramiding. In consideration of the traditional cross program of animals along with the features of animal segregating populations, four types of cross programs and two types of selection strategies for gene pyramiding are performed from a practical perspective. Two population cross for pyramiding two genes (denoted II), three population cascading cross for pyramiding three genes(denoted III), four population symmetry (denoted IIII-S) and cascading cross for pyramiding four genes (denoted IIII-C), and various schemes (denoted cross program-A-E) are designed for each cross program given different levels of initial favorite allele frequencies, base population sizes and trait heritabilities. The process of gene pyramiding breeding for various schemes are simulated and compared based on the population hamming distance, average superior genotype frequencies and average phenotypic values. By simulation, the results show that the larger base population size and the higher the initial favorite allele frequency the higher the efficiency of gene pyramiding. Parents cross order is shown to be the most important factor in a cascading cross, but has no significant influence on the symmetric cross. The results also show that genotypic selection strategy is superior to phenotypic selection in accelerating gene pyramiding. Moreover, the method and corresponding software was used to compare different cross schemes and selection strategies.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.640-645
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• 2016

The objective of this study was to evaluate the present conventional selection program of a swine nucleus farm and compare it with a new selection strategy employing genomic enhanced breeding value (GEBV) as the selection criteria. The ZPLAN+ software was employed to calculate and compare the genetic gain, total cost, return and profit of each selection strategy. The first strategy reflected the current conventional breeding program, which was a progeny test system (CS). The second strategy was a selection scheme based strictly on genomic information (GS1). The third scenario was the same as GS1, but the selection by GEBV was further supplemented by the performance test (GS2). The last scenario was a mixture of genomic information and progeny tests (GS3). The results showed that the accuracy of the selection index of young boars of GS1 was 26% higher than that of CS. On the other hand, both GS2 and GS3 gave 31% higher accuracy than CS for young boars. The annual monetary genetic gain of GS1, GS2 and GS3 was 10%, 12%, and 11% higher, respectively, than that of CS. As expected, the discounted costs of genomic selection strategies were higher than those of CS. The costs of GS1, GS2 and GS3 were 35%, 73%, and 89% higher than those of CS, respectively, assuming a genotyping cost of $120. As a result, the discounted profit per animal of GS1 and GS2 was 8% and 2% higher, respectively, than that of CS while GS3 was 6% lower. Comparison among genomic breeding scenarios revealed that GS1 was more profitable than GS2 and GS3. The genomic selection schemes, especially GS1 and GS2, were clearly superior to the conventional scheme in terms of monetary genetic gain and profit.

• Research in Plant Disease
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.35-39
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• 2012

Occurrence of tomato late blight (Phytophthora infestans) has caused significant losses in tomato yield in all over the world. Evaluation of the level of resistance in tomato gene resources for main breeding and initiation of the resistance breeding program are important for control of this disease. Resistant assay of 78 tomato cultivars/lines to late blight in pots and field experiment was carried out under controlled and natural conditions in 2009. All commercial cultivars including 'Legend' were susceptible. However, 10 lines including KNU-2, KNU-6-1, KNU-11, KNU-13, KNU-14-1 lines distributed from University of California, Riverside and L3708, $AV107-4{\times}L3708$, $07-15{\times}L3708$, $BS67{\times}L3708$ lines which have resistant gene Ph-3 and $06-9-62A{\times}06-9-62A$ were highly resistant to late blight. These highly resistant lines can be used as resources of resistance to late blight in a tomato breeding program in future.

• Asian Journal of Turfgrass Science
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.73-85
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• 1997

Although zoysia grass (Zoysia spp.) has a lot of excellent chracteristics as warm-season grass, it have been limited in use due to slow establishment, low seed production, poor shade tolerance and other factors. Breeding trials have been continued from 1900's, much attentions have been paid especially in U.S.A., Korea and Japan recently. In U.S.A., more than 24 varieties had been evaluated at National Turfgrass Evaluation Program(NTEP) from 1991 to 1995 and some were regsistered as commercial. After the 6th International Turfgrass Research Conference at Japan in 1989, Japan Turfgrass In-corporation (JTI) sponsored by private companies and government carried out breeding programs for pest, salt, and shade tolerant and herbicide resistant varieties. JTI also has been trying to im-prove vigor and breed evergreen zoysia Korean breeders collected germplasms since 1960's. After USDA breeders came to Korean penesula in 1982, Korean breeders joined with USDA zoysia breeding project for several years. Many interspecific hybrids and natural selected varieties were breeded that period both in U.S.A and Korea. Breeding objectives were to extend green color period, improve leaf quality and density, and better leaf color at dormant stage. Since 1990's, zoysia grass breeding trials are getting more diverse in many points such as random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) assay for ecotype identification. The objectives of this study are to evaluate germplasms in Korea, and also review the present status and future prospect in zoysia grass breeding in the world.

• Research in Plant Disease
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.20-23
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• 2015

A sequential planting method was developed to screen rice plants with durable resistance against rice blast in a short time, and applied for several years in Korean rice breeding program. In this study, we showed the advantages of a sequential planting method compared to other pathogenicity tests. The correlation analysis among three pathogenicity tests and other factors demonstrated that durable resistance depended on the average of diseased leaf area and the number of compatible pathogens. Significant correlations were found in the nursery test but not in the field test result. In addition, we traced changes in the pathogen population during sequential planting stages through re-isolation of the pathogen. The portion of compatible pathogens was increased during sequential planting. Through this study, we provide an effective sequential planting method and direction of durable resistance in a breeding program.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.357-369
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• 2010

Cymbidium is horticulturally important and has been one of the most commercially successful orchid plants as well as cut flowers around the world including Korea. Up to now, a huge number of elite Cymbidium cultivars have been released on the commercial market via cross-hybridization, mutation and polyploidization breeding techniques. To investigate on breeding system in Cymbidium, we inquired the brief history and techniques of breeding and the current status on Cymbidium breeding in Korea. Also, the general propagation process of elite Cymbidium lines via tissue culture should be presented. However, the slow process of conventional breeding and the lack of useful genes in Cymbidium species delays the introduction of new cultivars to the commercial market. To solve these limitations, efficient regeneration and genetic transformation systems should be established in the improvement of Cymbidium breeding program. During the last several decades, some progress has been made in tissue culture and genetic transformation in Cymbidium species. We review the recent status of tissue culture and genetic transformation systems in Cymbidium plants.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.165-172
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• 2004

Research activities on the fields of marine biotechnology becomes active not only in developing countries but also in Asian countries. Among those countries China recently initiate the national marine biotechnology R&D program. Since 1996, marine biotechnology has been approved to be a subject of the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China as 863 program. In the first five years from 1996 to 2000 and successively in the second five years from 2001 to 2005, Marine Biotechnology R&D 863 program has been funded by Chinese government with 97.5 million RMB and then more than 200 million RMB, respectively. Under this program there are mainly six R&D subjects of marine biotechnology; 1. Breeding engineering, 2. Control of the disease, 3. Production system and culture facilities, 4. Marine drug and bioproducts, 5. Functional genes and genomics, 6. Breeding of the saltresistant plants. In this paper the research activities and results of 863 program were introduced, and from chinese cases we could leam how we plan and perform the marine biotechnology program of Korea in future.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.627-632
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• 2002

Genetic parameters for dairy performance traits were estimated, breeding values for the traits of all breeding sires and cows were predicted and the genetic trends were estimated using the breeding values in the Central Cattle Breeding Station (CCBS). A total of 3,801 records for Bangladeshi Local, 756 records for Red Sindhi and 959 records for Sahiwal covering the period from 1961 to 1997 were used in this analysis. Traits considered were total milk production per lactation (TLP), lactation length (LL) and daily milk yield (DMY). The genetic parameters were estimated by the REML using MTDFREML program. The breeding values were predicted by a best linear unbiased prediction (BLUP). In all sets of data, the genetic trends for the dairy performance traits were computed as averages of breeding values for cows born in the particular year. The estimates of heritability for TLP (0.26 and 0.27) and DMY (0.28 and 0.27) were moderate in Bangladeshi local and Red Sindhi breed, respectively. Furthermore, the heritability estimate for LL (0.24) was moderate in Red Sindhi. The estimates of heritabilities for all traits were low in Sahiwal. The repeatability estimate was high for TLP, moderate for LL and moderate to high for DMY. All variances estimated in Bangladeshi Local were low, comparing the respective values estimated in both Red Sindhi and Sahiwal. On the other hand, additive genetic variances for the three traits were estimated very low in Sahiwal. The genetic trends for the three dairy production traits have not been positive except for the recent trend in Bangladeshi Local.