Byun-Woo Lee

Genotypic variation of cadmium accumulation and distribution in rice

An effective way to reduce the risk of cadmium (Cd) entering the food chain is to use low Cd-accumulation rice cultivars, particularly in Asia. The fundamental requirement for breeding low grain Cd-accumulation cultivars is to know the genotypic variation in Cd accumulation and the physiological processes and genetic basis governing the Cd accumulation in rice grain. In this experiment, genotypic variation in Cd accumulation and distribution among rice organs was studied using thirty-five rice varieties. They were grown with irrigation water containing 2 ppm Cd throughout rice growing season under field condition in 2007. At harvest, plants were sampled and analyzed for Cd concentration and accumulation in each rice organ. Significant variation of Cd concentration and accumulation in rice organs were found among thirty-five rice cultivars, revealing more than 8-fold varietal differences in grain Cd concentration and shoot Cd accumulation. Cd concentration and accumulation in grain were significantly different among cultivar groups, showing the highest in indica and the lowest in temperate japonica. Tongil-type and tropical japonica rice showed a Cd concentration intermediate to that of temperate japonica and indica rice. The higher Cd accumulation in grain of indica rice was attributable to the greater ability of Cd uptake. The greater ability of root-shoot translocation in tropical japonica and shoot-grain redistribution in tongil-type resulted in the significantly higher grain Cd concentration in these cultivar groups than in temperate japonica. For over 35 cultivars tested, grain Cd concentration revealed a significant positive correlation with root Cd concentration and shoot Cd concentration and accumulation while no significant correlation with root-shoot translocation factor and shoot-grain redistribution ratio. However, correlation analyses within each cultivar group showed that grain Cd concentration was significantly correlated with root-shoot translocation factor in indica, with root Cd concentration in tongil-type, with shoot Cd concentration and accumulation in tropical japonica, and with shoot Cd accumulation and shoot-grain redistribution ratio in temperate japonica. These results indicate that genotypic variation in grain Cd accumulation, in general, is controlled by all the three physiological processes but the major physiological process governing its genotypic variation within cultivar group is different depending on cultivar groups.

Estimating canopy cover from color digital camera image of rice field

Canopy cover (CC) is a good predictor variable for plant growth parameters such as leaf area index and aboveground biomass. A nondestructive, low-cost, and convenient method is presented for estimating CC using digital camera image analysis. CC was estimated by the ratio of plant pixels to total pixels of digital camera image of rice field. To determine the criteria for segmenting the rice plant from variable soil background, three mosaic images for rice plant, flooded/bare soil, and algae-infested background were prepared from digital camera images that were taken in various field conditions. An image analysis program was developed in Visual Basic to extract red, green, and blue (RGB) features from the mosaic images, calculate RGB-based color indices, and compute the minimum segmentation error for separating rice plant from background. When judged by the segmentation error, modified excessive green index (MEGI) showed the highest potential for segmenting rice plant from flooded/bare soil background, followed by normalized green (g) and excessive green index (EGI). At the threshold MEGI value of 0.03, the segmentation error was the lowest as 0.13%. Any single index considered was not satisfactory in segmenting rice plant from algae-infested background. However, a discriminant function of 1.2553EGI + 0.01735G − 0.01474B was successful in segmenting rice plant from flooded/bare soil and algaeinfested background with segmentation errors of 0.34 and 1.17%, respectively. CC for four rice varieties from tillering to booting stage was estimated based on the threshold value of MEGI and discriminant function and also manually using commercial software. Both estimates of CC showed good relationship of r2 = 0.94, suggesting that a digital camera could be used efficiently for measuring the CC of rice field.

Physiological characteristics of a functional stay-green rice “SNU-SG1” during grain-filling period

Functional stay-green has been regarded as a promising characteristic to be introduced for improving rice yield potential. A functional stay-green rice “SNU-SG1” that was identified from japonica rice collections was compared with two regular high-yielding rice cultivars (HYVs) for the temporal change of leaf chlorophyll, soluble protein, and root activity, and nitrogen accumulation and remobilization during the grain-filling period. SNU-SG1 had slower decreasing rate and maintained higher concentration of chlorophyll and soluble protein in upper four leaves during the grain-filling period than HYVs “Suweon490” and “Andabyeo”, revealing a typical stay-green characteristic. Even though SNU-SG1 remobilized almost the same proportion of N accumulated before heading as HYVs to grain, it maintained much higher leaf N concentration due to the significantly higher N accumulation that is ascribable to the higher root activity sustenance during grain-filling period. The functional stay-green trait of SNU-SG1 seems to stem not only from the genetic control preventing chlorophyll degradation but also from the higher capacity to absorb N from soil due to the sustained strong root activity during grain-filling period. SNU-SG1 exhibited higher crop growth rate during late grain-filling period than HYVs, resulting in higher grain-filling percentage and non-structural carbohydrate re-accumulation in the stem at the final stage of grain filling. It is concluded that SNU-SG1 has a promising trait “functional stay-green” contributable to rice yield potential improvement through the improved grain filling.

Preliminary Report of Observed Urban - Rural Gradient of Carbon Dioxide Concentration across Seoul, Suwon, and Icheon in South Korea

Urban atmosphere may play as a harbinger for the future climate change with respect to temperature and concentration. The Seoul metropolitan area is unique in rapid urbanization and industrialization during the last several decades, providing a natural dome with increased temperature. This study was carried out to evaluate the feasibility of using the urban-rural environmental gradient in replacement of the IPCC mid-term scenario (after 30-50 years). For this, we measured atmospheric concentration and air temperature at three sites with different degree of urbanization (Seoul, Suwon, and Icheon). Results from 11-month measurement can be summarized as follows: (1) The annual mean concentration across 3 sites was in the order of Seoul (439 ppm) > Suwon (419 ppm) > Icheon (416 ppm), showing a substantial urban-rural environmental gradient. (2) The diurnal fluctuation in concentration was greater in summer than in winter, showing the effect of photosynthesis on local concentration. (3) The daily maximum concentration was observed at 0500 LST in spring and summer, 0800 LST in autumn, and 0900 LST in winter, showing the sunrise-time dependence. (4) The observed hourly maximum concentration averaged for the whole period was 446 ppm in Seoul at 0700 LST, while the minimum was 407 ppm in Suwon at 1500 LST. (5) Compared with the background atmospheric concentration of in Anmyeon-do (377.4 ppm annual mean), concentration of the study sites was higher by 14% in Seoul, by 10% in Suwon, and by 9% in Icheon. The observed concentration in Seoul reached already 98% of the 2030-2040 projection (450 ppm) and 80% of the 2040-2050 projection (550 ppm) under the IPCC BAU scenario, showing a feasibility of using the dome of Seoul as a natural experimental setting for the mid-term climate change impact assessment.

Differentially expressed genes related to symbiotic association in a supernodulating soybean mutant and its wild-type

SUMMARY To understand the molecular basis of symbiotic association, a cDNA-AFLP technique was used to identify differentially expressed transcripts between a supernodulating soybean mutant, SS2-2, and its wild-type, Sinpaldalkong 2. As sources of cDNA-AFLP templates, trifoliates of 2-week-old plants were collected 1 week after Bradyrhizobium japonicum inoculation. A total of 147 bands out of 4000 amplicons were recognized as differentially expressed fragments, with 40 transcript-derived fragments (TDFs) in SS2-2 and 65 TDFs in Sinpaldalkong 2. Qualitative and quantitative real-time RT-PCR assays suggested that the expression patterns of genes in both genotypes were clearly differentiated. TDFs homologous to nodulin (65S2) and a putative senescence-associated protein (9S1) were up-regulated in SS2-2, whereas Sinpaldalkong 2 showed up-regulation of a receptor-like kinase (48sin1) and a kinase-like protein (17sin1). This indicates that different genes may be involved in regulation of the symbiotic programme that distinguishes SS2-2 from its wild-type. A TDF showing a change in a single base from A (Sinpaldalkong 2) to T (SS2-2) in this study was identified as a Glycine max nodule autoregulation receptor-like protein kinase precursor, previously identified by map-based cloning. These results demonstrate that cDNA-AFLP is a powerful technique to detect interesting genes without prior assumptions about the nature of the genes. The differentially expressed genes between Sinpaldalkong 2 and SS2-2 suggest that different signal transduction pathways for symbiosis may be involved in the two soybean genotypes.

Absorption, translocation, and remobilization of cadmium supplied at different growth stages of rice

Cadmium (Cd) is absorbed by rice root and transferred into the other rice organs including grain. A solution-culture experiment was conducted to investigate the absorption and distribution of Cd supplied at different growth stages of rice. Two rice cultivars, a japonica ‘Chucheong’ and a tongil-type ‘Milyang23’ that exhibit high and low ability of Cd absorption by root and accumulation in grain were grown in culture solution and subjected to 2 ppm CdCl2 treatment for 2 weeks at four different growth stages: before panicle initiation stage (BPI), after panicle initiation stage (API), early ripening stage (ER), and mid-ripening stage (MR). Cd concentration and accumulation in rice organs were measured at harvest. The two rice cultivars accumulated two to three times greater amounts of Cd in grain in the two Cd treatments before heading (BPI and API treatments) than in the Cd treatment after heading (ER and MR treatment). The higher grain Cd accumulation in BPI and API treatments was not attributed to the higher Cd uptake but to the higher translocation from root to shoot and the higher redistribution from shoot to grain than ER and MR treatments These results imply that the remobilization of Cd through phloem during leaf senescence is the major process for Cd accumulation in rice grain rather than direct transport of absorbed Cd through the xylem-phloem transfer to grain. ‘Milyang23’ absorbed significantly smaller amount of Cd than ‘Chucheong’. However, ‘Milyang23’ accumulated more than a three times larger amount of Cd in grain compared to ‘Chucheong’ as the former exhibited the higher root-shoot translocation and shoot-grain remobilization as well. It indicates that the greater Cd translocation from root to shoot and subsequent higher Cd remobilization from shoot to grain, not the higher absorption ability, have led to the higher Cd accumulation and concentration in grain of ‘Milyang23’.

Phenology and Seed Yield Performance of Determinate Soybean Cultivars Grown at Elevated Temperatures in a Temperate Region

Increased temperature means and fluctuations associated with climate change are predicted to exert profound effects on the seed yield of soybean. We conducted an experiment to evaluate the impacts of global warming on the phenology and yield of two determinate soybean cultivars in a temperate region (37.27°N, 126.99°E; Suwon, South Korea). These two soybean cultivars, Sinpaldalkong [maturity group (MG) IV] and Daewonkong (MG VI), were cultured on various sowing dates within a four-year period, under no water-stress conditions. Soybeans were kept in greenhouses controlled at the current ambient temperature (AT), AT+1.5°C, AT+3.0°C, and AT+5.0°C throughout the growth periods. Growth periods (VE–R7) were significantly prolonged by the elevated temperatures, especially the R1–R5 period. Cultivars exhibited no significant differences in seed yield at the AT+1.5°C and AT+3.0°C treatments, compared to AT, while a significant yield reduction was observed at the AT+5.0°C treatment. Yield reductions resulted from limited seed number, which was due to an overall low numbers of pods and seeds per pod. Heat stress conditions induced a decrease in pod number to a greater degree than in seed number per pod. Individual seed weight exhibited no significant variation among temperature elevation treatments; thus, seed weight likely had negligible impacts on overall seed yield. A boundary line analysis (using quantile regression) estimated optimum temperatures for seed number at 26.4 to 26.8°C (VE–R5) for both cultivars; the optimum temperatures (R5–R7) for single seed weight were estimated at 25.2°C for the Sinpaldalkong smaller-seeded cultivar, and at 22.3°C for the Daewonkong larger-seeded cultivar. The optimum growing season (VE–R7) temperatures for seed yield, which were estimated by combining the two boundary lines for seed number and seed weight, were 26.4 and 25.0°C for the Sinpaldalkong and Daewonkong cultivars, respectively. Considering the current soybean growing season temperature, which ranges from 21.7 (in the north) to 24.6°C (in the south) in South Korea, and the temperature response of potential soybean yields, further warming of less than approximately 1°C would not become a critical limiting factor for soybean production in South Korea.

The Effects of Single- and Multiple-Weed Interference on Soybean Yield in the Far-Eastern Region of Russia

Lack of understanding the effects of single- and multiple-weed interference on soybean yield has led to inadequate weed management in Primorsky Krai, resulting in much lower average yield than neighboring regions. A 2 yr field experiment was conducted in a soybean field located in Bogatyrka (43.82°N, 131.6°E), Primorsky Krai, Russia, in 2013 and 2014 to investigate the effects of single and multiple interference caused by naturally established weeds on soybean yield and to model these effects. Aboveground dry weight was negatively affected the most by weed interference, followed by number of pods and seeds. Soybean yield under single-weed interference was best demonstrated by a rectangular hyperbolic model, showing that common ragweed and barnyardgrass were the most competitive weed species, followed by annual sowthistle, American sloughgrass, and common lambsquarters. In the case of multiple-weed interference, soybean yield loss was accurately described by a multivariate rectangular hyperbolic model, with total density equivalent as the independent variable. Parameter estimates indicated that weed-free soybean yields were similar in 2013 and 2014, i.e., estimated as 1.72 t and 1.75 t ha-1, respectively, and competitiveness of each weed species was not significantly different between the two years. Economic thresholds for single-weed interference were 0.74, 0.66, 1.15, 1.23, and 1.45 plants m-2 for common ragweed, barnyardgrass, annual sowthistle, American sloughgrass, and common lambsquarters, respectively. The economic threshold for multiple-weed interference was 0.70 density equivalent m-2. These results, including the model, thus can be applied to a decision support system for weed management in soybean cultivation under single and multiple-weed interference in Primorsky Krai and its neighboring regions of Russia. Nomenclature: Common ragweed, Ambrosia artemisiifolia L.; barnyardgrass, Echinochloa crus-galli (L.) Beauv.; annual sowthistle, Sonchus oleraceus L.; common lambsquarters, Chenopodium album L.; American sloughgrass, Beckmannia syzigachne (Steud.) Fernald; soybean, Glycine max (L.) Merr.

Use of an Empirical Model to Estimate Leaf Wetness Duration for Operation of a Disease Warning System Under a Shade in a Ginseng Field

Ginseng foliar diseases are typically controlled by spray application using periodic schedules. Few disease warning systems have been used for effective control of ginseng foliar diseases because ginseng is grown under shade nettings, which makes it difficult to obtain weather data for operation of the disease warning system. Using weather data measured outside the shade as inputs to an empirical leaf wetness duration (LWD) model, LWD was estimated to examine if operation of a disease warning system would be feasible for control of ginseng foliar diseases. An empirical model based on a fuzzy logic system (fuzzy model) was used to estimate LWD at two commercial ginseng fields located in Gochang-gun and Jeongeup-si, Korea, in 2011 and 2012. Accuracy of LWD estimates was assessed in terms of mean error (ME) and mean absolute error (MAE). The fuzzy model tended to overestimate LWD during dew eligible days whereas it tended to underestimate LWD during rainfall eligible days. Still, daily disease risk ratings of the TOM-CAST disease warning system, which are derived from estimates of wetness duration and temperature, had a tendency to coincide with that derived from measurements of weather variables. As a result, spray advisory dates for the TOM-CAST disease warning system were predicted within ±3 days for about 78% of time windows during which the action threshold for spray application was reached. This result suggested that estimates of LWD using an empirical model would be helpful in control of a foliar disease in a ginseng field. It was also found that a spray application time model using meteorological observations may prove successful without the requirement of leaf wetness sensors within the field. Development of empirical correction schemes to the fuzzy model and a physical model for LWD estimation in a ginseng field could improve accuracy of LWD estimates and, as a result, spray advisory date prediction, which merits further studies.

Genotypic difference in spikelet sterility response to air temperature during the reproductive stage of rice

This experiment was conducted to evaluate the varietal differences of spikelet sterility response to air temperature during the reproductive stage. Six rice varieties differing in maturity group (early-maturing; Unkwangbyeo, Odaebyeo, medium-maturing; Andabyeo, Hwasungbyeo, and mid-late maturing; Donganbyeo, Chuchungbyeo) were grown under ambient temperature (AT) conditions before being transferred to the temperature-controlled plastic houses. For the synchronization of the growth stage, 15 rice seedlings (2011) and 10 rice seedlings (2012) per pot were transplanted in a circle and only main stems were grown by removing tillers at early stage of their emergence. At the initial heading stage, pots for each variety were transferred to the four plastic houses that were controlled to AT, AT + 1.5°C, AT + 3.0°C, and AT + 5.0°C, respectively. Spikelet fertility was significantly decreased due to high temperature-induced spikelet sterility at AT + 3.0 and/or AT + 5.0°C treatment during flowering time in 2011. Spikelet fertility in 2012 was much lower than in 2011 even at the AT treatment because of high temperature-induced spikelet sterility at the micosporogenesis stage. Critical temperature (Tc) that induces 50% spikelet sterility at flowering time was estimated by fitting the temperature response of spikelet fertility to a logistic function. Tc ranged from 34.6°C (Odaebyeo) to 39.7°C (Hwasungbyeo), Odaebyeo being significantly more sensitive to high temperature-induced spikelet sterility than the other varieties. This result has shown that response of spikelet sterility to higher temperature is different according to rice varieties. However, further study should be done to arrive at a concrete conclusion.