PAG Asia 2014

May 19 - 21, 2014

Plenary Lecture: Masahiro Yano - "Genomics-Based Allele Mining and Its Integration Into Breeding In Rice"

Formerly of the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, the past research and work of Masahiro Yano has been focused on genetic and molecular dissection of complex traits in rice. Mainly natural variations (differences in cultivars) are analyzed. He has been particularly involved in analyzing the genetic control of flowering time and seed dormancy, which is strongly related to tolerance in pre-harvest sprouting. Several key genes involving genetic control of flowering time and seed dormancy have been cloned by map-based cloning. These findings have contributed to an understanding of the hierarchy of the gene expression network. To facilitate the genetic analysis of natural variations, his group is also involved in developing plant material resources, such as RILs (recombinant inbred lines) and CSSLs (chromosome segment substitution lines). They have also been involved in the genome-wide discovery of single nucleotide polymorphisms for allele mining in diverse germplasm.