Outline of our achievements
Laboratory of Plant Molecular Breeding
About our research
Purpose of our research
For a long time, mankind have been producing new crops, easy to cultivate and with good harvest of high quality, by repeating crossbreedings and selections. However, to improve the current situation in which one out of seven people is said to be in the state of hunger and to cope with rapid environmental changes such as global warming, we have to produce better crops ever before. Our laboratory puts efforts to discover useful information from the genomes of various crops and to develop methods for efficiently breeding of new cultivars.
Feature of our research
We have been analyzing the information of plant genomes to identify useful genes and characteristic markers. Based on these results, we are determined to develop technologies to realize rapid breeding of new cultivars by collaborating with domestic and foreign institutions and companies.
Expected fields of application
In addition to conventional selection methods of observing crop characters (color, shape, etc.), we are developing new selection methods by exploiting genomic information that is expected to produce new cultivars possessing characters hitherto unknown and to shorten the breeding period assumed in general to take ten years or more.
Our research projects
- To discover genomic information useful for breeding
- To develop selection technology by using genome information
- To develop supporting tools for genome-based breeding
Genes and markers for easy growth, tastiness, etc, that are important for breeding are hidden within huge genomic information as if pieces of treasure buried in the desert. We search for genes and markers with useful features that are hidden at different locations in individual crops.
We develop selective technology by asking how to combine information for useful genes and markers to achieve most effective breeding.
We develop supporting tools so that breeding researchers can easily collect and compare genomic and phenotypic information without using any expensive facility or equipment.