日本と海外をつなぐクラウドソーシング

Kihara Institute for Biological research - Yokohama city University (KIBR-YCU)

2015/03～

Cassava Genome Editing Project for Flowering Matter.
March 2016 - Present | 2 years and 3 months
Colombia, Japan, United States
Description
Establishment of international research network and Gene expression studies for Cassava Flowering.

 Achievements:
Cassava crop plants is main food for at least 500 million people in Africa, Far east asia and Latin America.it is fourth internationally ranking crop plants. Keeping genetic diversity in crop plants is important to have a strong genetic resource against biotic (disease and pests) and abiotic (drought, cold and heat) stresses. Cassava is late flowering type plant and it makes many difficulties for natural and artificial crossing inside Cassava varieties and beside that it is normally reproduced by stake propagation but it makes genetic diversity of this important crop narrow down and it is a big risk for food security in term of Cassava. By using new genetic engineering tools like “Genome editing”, try to tune up the flowering time of Cassava for the purpose of plant breeding and genetic diversity. It has been expected a comprehensive plan for research conducting which started in 2016 and continue till 2018. There are precise time plan and tasks for each collaborator as follow: gene discovery related flowering time genes is going on in CIAT, NARO team in Japan with collaboration of University of Minnesota are doing genome editing and RIKEN and Purdue university trying to do gene transformation for some special variety of Cassava.
Activities Performed
To promote and demonstration of importance of genome editing, we had organized a international symposium in CIAT headquarter in Colombia and beside of 200 direct participants we had webinar via Facebook and 2500 audiences was participated. The project in each part is going on in proper way. I create a network extension regarding this project and we trying to get connection with other researchers in other disciplines and crop to make a promotion for such kind of new aspect of plant molecular breeding between different research teams as well as in contact with governmental and domestic organizations in each area. The project will be terminate in the end of 2018 based on expected time and budget. The project has been funded by Japan society for the promotion of science (JSPS), Ministry of higher education of Japan.