Collection,preservation and distribution of Oryza genetic resources by the National Bioresource Project RICE (NBRP-RICE)

Biological resources are the basic infrastructure of bioscience research. Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a good experimental model for research in cereal crops and monocots and includes important genetic materials used in breeding. The availability of genetic materials, including mutants, is important for rice research. In addition, Oryza species are attractive to researchers for both finding useful genes for breeding and for understanding the mechanism of genome evolution that enables wild plants to adapt to their own habitats. NBRP-RICE contributes to rice research by promoting the usage of genetic materials, especially wild Oryza accessions and mutant lines. Our activity includes collection, preservation and distribution of those materials and the provision of basic information on them, such as morphological and physiological traits and genomic information. In this review paper, we introduce the activities of NBRP-RICE and our database, Oryzabase, which facilitates the access to NBRP-RICE resources and their genomic sequences as well as the current situation of wild Oryza genome sequencing efforts by NBRP-RICE and other institutes.     

Environmental characteristics of spawning and nursery grounds of Japanese sardine and mackerels in the Kuroshio and Kuroshio Extension area

The sustainable use of marine resources requires understanding the surrounding ecosystem and elucidating mechanisms of variation. However, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of environmental variation in the spawning and nursery grounds of important fisheries species Japanese sardine (Sardinops melanostictus) and mackerels (Scomber japonicus and Scomber australasicus) in the northwest Pacific. Here, we investigate detailed physical, chemical, and biological environment variations in the spawning and nursery grounds along the Kuroshio and Kuroshio Extension area from intensive investigation in spawning season (April) of 2013. We found similar water mass property and copepod community in the egg‐rich Kuroshio area and the larvae‐rich downstream Kuroshio Extension area, indicating environmental variability is small during transportation and development processes. The egg‐rich northern Izu Islands region showed high copepod abundance, although low nutrient and chlorophyll concentrations were observed. Eggs were scarce or absent in the second survey 10 days after abundant eggs were observed in the region, along with differences in water property and copepod community. This indicates that not only the location but also the specific water characteristic and copepod community are a determining factor for spawning. Indicator communities of copepod found in our study (indicator community of transportation process from spawning ground, of non‐spawning ground, and of reproductive area in the Kuroshio Extension area) would be a key factor for recruitment prediction.