The unit will cover an agro-biological resources area seeking to boost crop production for stable supply and a plant protection area for which plant disease and insect experts will be gathered. It will conduct project-oriented research under specific deadlines and train young researchers in Japan and foreign countries. The two areas of research will concentrate on the crop development in mountainous regions of northern Vietnam (an international science and technology cooperation project addressing global challenges) (FY2010-2015, JST-JICA). Achievements of this project will be diffused in monsoon Asia and Africa. A laboratory and a test field established at Hanoi University of Agriculture for plant varieties and crop culture will be positioned as a satellite laboratory of Kyushu University for long-term development.
- Agro-biological Resources
Japan’s rice science has contributed to growing rice as a staple crop and using it as an experimental crop. But its academic achievements have not necessarily been utilized for practical cases in the world. In the agro-biological resources area, we will develop efficient breeding schemes and local high-yield and resistant varieties in northern Vietnam: an area with a diverse social/natural environment, and will build a system integrating the establishment of culture technology systems and the spillover and diffusion of new varieties to improve local food self-sufficiency and will diffuse technology seeds in rice farming regions throughout the world. Specifically, we will take maximum advantage of rice genome information to explore and identify useful gene resources, develop marker information and establish a next-generation rice breeding method based on high-speed genotyping. Useful genes (featuring higher yields and resistance to diseases and pests) for which market information has been developed will be pyramided through accelerated generation and high-speed genotyping to promptly develop new varieties. We will also cooperate with Vietnamese research institutes to establish culture systems based on new varieties and diffuse these varieties.
- Plant Protection
We usually depend mainly on agrichemicals for preventing and eliminating pests and plant disease agents that can reduce crop yield and affect crop quality. But the frequent utilization of agrichemicals directly affects humans, domestic animals and other living things and destroys the ecosystem balance through their biological concentration and their stay in the environment. It may also make target diseases and pests more resistant to agrichemicals and eliminate natural enemies for some pests to turn these pests into harmful ones. While we reflect on the history of growing dependence on agrichemicals, we are now finding that plants have chemical and physical defense measures against diseases and pests and take advantage of natural enemies, symbiotic microbes and other living things to defend themselves and that plants’ resistance to diseases and pests could be increased through improvements in soil and other environments and heritable factors. In the plant protection area, experts in plant protection control, plant pathology, and plant genetics and breeding will cooperate with staffs at Hanoi University of Agriculture, Nong Lam University and Can Tho University in Vietnam to take maximum advantage of plants’ indigenous resistance to diseases and pests to develop environmentally friendly, sustainable disease and pest control technology. We will continue present efforts in Vietnam to develop biological control of invading pests including Brontispa longissima affecting coconut, to advance molecular genetics regarding rice’s resistance and sensitivity to bacterial blight, planthoppers, and other diseases and pests, and to create disease and pest resistant varieties using molecular genetics. The abovementioned three research units will cooperate to find out mechanisms for the dissemination of intractable plant disease agents through insects, physiological mechanisms for plants’ cross-resistance to disease agents and pests, and genes for mechanisms for plants to attract natural enemy insects in plant-pest-enemy interactions in order to develop new disease and pest control technology.