• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Plant Biotechnology Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.39-48
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• 2003

The ornamental industry encompasses cut flower, pot plant, turfgrass and nursery stock production and is an important part of the agricultural sector. As internationally traded commodities, cut flowers and plants are an integral part of the economy of a number of developing countries in South America, the Caribbean and Africa. Genetic modification (GM) is a tool with great potential to the ornamental horticulture industry. The rapid progress in our knowledge of plant molecular biology can accelerate the breeding ornamental plants using recombinant DNA technology techniques. Not only is there the possibility of creating new, novel products the driver of the industry but also the potential to develop varieties requiring less chemical and energy inputs. As an important non-food agricultural sector the use of genetically modified (GM) ornamental crops may also be ideal for the intensive farming necessary to generate pharmaceuticals and other useful products in GM plants. To date, there are only a few ornamental GM products in development and only one, a carnation genetically modified for flower colour, in the marketplace. International Flower Developments, a joint venture between Florigene Ltd. in Australia and Suntory Ltd.of Japan, developed the GM carnations. These flowers are currently on sale in USA, Japan and Australia. The research, development and commercialisation of these products are summarised. The long term prospects for ornamental GM products, like food crops, will be determined by the regulatory environment, and the acceptance of GM products in the marketplace. These critical factors will be analysed in the context of the current legislative environment, and likely public and industry opinion towards ornamental genetically modified organisms (GMO's).

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.475-480
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• 2009

The transcription of soybean (Glycine max) calmodulin isoform-4 (GmCaM-4) is dramatically induced within 0.5 h of exposure to pathogen or NaCl. Core cis-acting elements that regulate the expression of the GmCaM-4 gene in response to pathogen and salt stress were previously identified, between -1,207 and -1,128 bp, and between -858 and -728 bp, in the GmCaM-4 promoter. Here, we characterized the properties of the DNA-binding complexes that form at the two core cis-acting elements of the GmCaM-4 promoter in pathogen-treated nuclear extracts. We generated GUS reporter constructs harboring various deletions of approximately 1.3-kb GmCaM-4 promoter, and analyzed GUS expression in tobacco plants transformed with these constructs. The GUS expression analysis suggested that the two previously identified core regions are involved in inducing GmCaM-4 expression in the heterologous system. Finally, a transient expression assay of Arabidopsis protoplasts showed that the GmCaM-4 promoter produced greater levels of GUS activity than did the CaMV35S promoter after pathogen or NaCl treatments, suggesting that the GmCaM-4 promoter may be useful in the production of conditional gene expression systems.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.147-150
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• 2016

Global GM crops continue to grow. They have reached 181 million hectares. A total of 28 countries have approved biotech crops for planting. More than 60 countries have approved biotech crops to be imported as food and feed since 1996, meaning that biotech crops are now commonly accepted in those countries. Although biotech crops provide key solutions for the challenge of global food security in the future due to population growth and climate change, there are still some debates on whether biotech crops should be accepted in many countries including Korea. Therefore, it is very important to make people understand that GM crops will provide benefits to both farmers and consumers. In this review, current global status of GM crop development and commercialization are summarized.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.125-129
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• 2011

Environmental risk assessment (RA) is essential prior to the environmental release of GM crops. RA, however, costs at least 7 to 15 million US dollars and requires several years to complete field tests. Therefore, it is strongly suggested that developers of GM crops must consider all criteria for RA at the beginning stage of the development if it aims for commercialization. Previous review papers have pointed out that the "death valley" for the commercialization of GM crops is the screening stage of early GM events since many candidates are given up due to insufficient data on the molecular characterization of a GM event such as inserted gene's copy number, position of inserted site of a chromosome, flanking sequence of recombinant T-DNA, rearrangement of chromosome, and knock out of endogenous gene of host plant. Recently, Rural Development Administration (RDA) in South Korea has launched a Grand National Project named as "Next Generation of BioGreen 21 Project" from 2011 to 2020 and research funding for the development of global GM crops has been allocated to accelerate the commercialization of GM crops. In this regard, I strongly suggest that researchers involved in the development of GM crops for commercialization must conduct RA by themselves at the screening stage of pre-GM event based on the data for molecular characterization.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.261-267
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• 2009

The coexistence policy of GM and non-GM crops is still on the debates in EU since “the recommendation on guidelines for the development of national strategies and best practices to ensure the coexistence of GM crops with conventional and organic farming” has been reported in 2003. The major issues are maximum tolerance level of GMO admixture and minimum isolation distances of GM fields with others including conventional, organic and seeds production. Majority of member states in EU proposed that the tolerance level of GMO admixture must be more strictly controlled, in particular in the fields for organic crops and seeds production. To this end, it was proposed that minimum isolation distances to segregate GM crops from fields with organic crops and seeds production need to be further extended than those of conventional crops since cross pollination with other crops adjacent GM fields is known as the most prevalent source for GMO contamination. In these circumstances, it is strongly suggested that the current legislations need to be revised including the minimum isolation distances of fields for each species before field cultivation for a commercial GM crop is approved for the first time in South Korea.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Crop Science Conference
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• 2017.06a
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• pp.100-100
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• 2017

FT is one of the major floral activator in plant flowering. FT determines the changing point of time from vegetative stage to reproductive stage. To understand the role of FT homologs in short-day plant soybean, we identified 10 soybean FT homologous genes and named GmFTs. We figured out that 10 GmFT genes were further categorized into three subclades through phylogenetic analysis. Expression analysis of GmFT genes indicated that they might have different functions in photoperiod-dependent soybean flowering. Most of GmFTs, for example, GmFT2a, GmFT2b, GmFT5a and GmFT6 mainly expressed in soybean leaves at short-day condition. However, interestingly GmFT1a and GmFT4 represented opposite expression pattern to other GmFTs. Arabidopsis transgenic plants overexpressing GmFT2a and GmFT5a exhibited extremely early flowering. In contrast, overexpression of GmFT4 delayed flowering of Arabidopsis transgenic plants. The results suggest that GmFT4 has antagonistic role to other GmFTs in soybean flowering. Interestingly, mRNA level of GmFT2a is higher in early flowering soybean accessions than in late flowering ones. Moreover, the highest point of mRNA level of GmFT2a showed the positive correlation with the timing of flowering of soybean accessions. But that of GmFT4 showed opposite pattern. Here, we report that soybean FT homologs might acquire different functions in photoperiod-dependent flowering through the functional diversification during evolution.

• Weed & Turfgrass Science
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.159-163
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to observe the growth habit and investigate a possibility of cultivating the GM rice (CaMsrB2-8) as a rice cultivar having drought resistance. Germination viability test showed that there was no significant difference between the drought-resistant GM(CaMsrB2-8) and non-GM (Ilmi) rice which was the parent variety at the GM rice. All the seeds of CaMsrB2-8 and Ilmi germinated after 6 days. Viviparous germination was not found in CaMsrB2-8 and Ilmi that was grown in greenhouse at $23{\pm}2^{\circ}C$ with water spraying for 40 days. Ratooning of CaMsrB2-8 and Ilmi was observed in 7-14 days and found uniform in field condition. CaMsrB2-8 seemed to grow faster than Ilmi. But CaMsrB2-8 and Ilmi were similar in 14-21 days. Both CaMsrB2-8 and Ilmi showed low seed shattering and more than 90% grains were ripened. All the seeds scattered in the paddy soil surface were not germinated after passing the winter. This study suggests that the drought-resistant GM rice was not significantly different with the parent variety of Ilmi in many agronomic characteristics such as wildness traits.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.1183-1190
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• 2011

This study was aimed to establish the evaluating protocol and standard assessment for genetically modified (GM) hot pepper and to find out a proper statistic method to analyze for equality of agricultural characters between GM and non-GM pepper lines. GM and non-GM hot pepper lines were cultivated in two GMO fields in the middle region of Korea and total of 52 agricultural characters were collected during the plant growing season for 4 years, 2007 to 2010. Levene's test was conducted to confirm the homogeneity of raw data before statistic analysis. Two-way ANOVA in the multivariate tests and t-test were conducted to analyze 52 agricultural characters in order to find out the equality between H15 and P2377. From the statistical analysis through two-way ANOVA, 16 out of 16 plant growth traits, 9 out of 18 green fruit traits and 7 out of 18 red fruit traits among 4 years and 9 out of 16 plant growth traits, 4 out of 18 green fruit traits and 3 out of 18 red fruit traits between H15 and P2377 have shown the statistic differences. With the same raw data of 52 agricultural characters, t-test was also conducted. Based on the result from t-test, only 1 out of 16 plant growth traits, 2 out of 18 green fruit traits and 1 out of 18 red fruit traits have shown the differences between H15 and P2377, so that it was concluded that there is no statistic difference between H15 and P2377 in terms of agricultural characters. Also, the t-test is a proper statistic method to analyze each trait between GM and its control lines in order to evaluate agricultural characters.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2000

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.305-312
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• 2010

During a last decade, the introduced traits in commercialized GM crops have been diversified from a simple trait such as herbicide resistance gene or insectresistance gene which are related to the crop production into more complicated traits such as modification of fatty acid or essential amino acid composition, modified coloring pattern of flower. In addition, it was investigated that several other GM crops bearing more refined traits expected to lead next generation are also awaiting for risk assessment (RA) or under field test for the preparation of RA in the near future. These GM crops include abiotic stress resistance including drought or cold, increased biomass, production of bioethanol or diesel, production of pharmaceuticals or functional materials for industrial. In particular, in 2008 and 2009, it was reported that the highest number of GM crops for molecular farming are under developed in laboratory or green house level in all the world. Likewise, in Korea, 171 events from 49 plant species are under developed to introduce several important traits. At present, about 10 events are under field test to select elite lines for RA application. For the first time, herbicide resistance turfgrass developed by Korean research team has been submitted for RA and currently under requested for additional data. Moreover, GM rice resistant to leaf roll (folder) disease is expected as a next event to be submitted for RA application.