• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• 제31권7호
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• pp.1017-1035
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• 2018

The European Union (EU) is the world's third largest producer of beef. This contributes to the economy, rural development, social life, culture and gastronomy of Europe. The diversity of breeds, animal types (cows, bulls, steers, heifers) and farming systems (intensive, extensive on permanent or temporary pastures, mixed, breeders, feeders, etc) is a strength, and a weakness as the industry is often fragmented and poorly connected. There are also societal concerns regarding animal welfare and environmental issues, despite some positive environmental impacts of farming systems. The EU is amongst the most efficient for beef production as demonstrated by a relative low production of greenhouse gases. Due to regional differences in terms of climate, pasture availability, livestock practices and farms characteristics, productivity and incomes of beef producers vary widely across regions, being among the lowest of the agricultural systems. The beef industry is facing unprecedented challenges related to animal welfare, environmental impact, origin, authenticity, nutritional benefits and eating quality of beef. These may affect the whole industry, especially its farmers. It is therefore essential to bring the beef industry together to spread best practice and better exploit research to maintain and develop an economically viable and sustainable beef industry. Meeting consumers' expectations may be achieved by a better prediction of beef palatability using a modelling approach, such as in Australia. There is a need for accurate information and dissemination on the benefits and issues of beef for human health and for environmental impact. A better objective description of goods and services derived from livestock farming is also required. Putting into practice "agroecology" and organic farming principles are other potential avenues for the future. Different future scenarios can be written depending on the major driving forces, notably meat consumption, climate change, environmental policies and future organization of the supply chain.

• Korean Journal of Organic Agriculture
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• 제6권2호
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• pp.127-140
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• 1998

Organic farming excludes any use of the herbicide. The present paper reviews what can be done for effective weed control with existing weed control technology by farmers crop-ping paddy rice, field crops, vegetables, and fruit trees. If condition of the crop-land-al-lows diversified rotational use of the paddy land as paddy and upland field would minimize weed problem. Practising this is limited in acreage due to extremely limited governmental investment to the land for the purpose. Secondly, rotation of crops in the upland field breaking life cycles of various weeds adapted to each crop should reduce the weed problem. This is also limited as only a few crops are making the farmer profitable. In addition climate and tolerance of crops to high and low temperature. Monsoon rains and poor drainage restrict the freedom of choice. For any crop land year-round multiple cropping in denser planting shall lessen the weed problem, this multiple cropping practiced by 1960s has been abandoned due to laborshortage and increased production cost. Deep flooding the rice is impractical at present in Korean. Mulching crop with transparent, black , or combinated polyethylene sheet, hs been in-creasingly used. Progresses in development and use of mulch with allelopathic crop residues. inexpensive paper mulch, allelopathic crop residues, inexpensive paper mulch, allelopathic crop cultivar development, recently developed ex-perimental weeding machinaries, flamers, microbial herbicides, biological control organisms, soil sterilization techniques have been critically reviewed for their adoption into existing in-tegrated weeding system. Unfortunately, information on cost-benifit, and labor-benefit, for the various methods above mentioned are lacking. Urgent need for the research on rational weeding in organic farming, and herbicide low-input farming is emphasized.

• The Korean Journal of Mycology
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• 제32권1호
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• pp.54-56
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• 2004

Rust disease was occurred on blackberry lily (Belamcanda chinensis) in several farmer's fields located in Heohwa-myon, Goseong-gun, Gyeongnam province in Korea. The typical symptoms of the disease appeared as small, yellowish spot on leaves at first. The spots then turned brown, their edges rised slightly, and powdery mass of yellow or yellowish green spores appeared on the lesions. Severely infected leaves were blighted and eventually died. Urediniospores were yellow or yellowish brown in color, globoid to ovoid in shape and $21{\sim}46{\times}18{\sim}38\;{\mu}m$ in size. Teliospores were brown in color, oblong or clavate in shape and $32{\sim}64{\times}12{\sim}26\;{\mu}m$ in size. The causal fungus was identified as Puccinia belamcandae based on morphological characteristics and host specificity. This is the first report on the rust of B. chinensis caused by P. belamcandae in Korea.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• 제38권2호
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• pp.117-124
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• 2011

Considering that the world population is expected to total 9 billion by 2050, it will clearly be necessary to sustain and even accelerate the rate of improvement in crop productivity. In the 21st century, we now face another, perhaps more devastating, environmental threat, namely climate change, which could cause irreversible damage to agricultural ecosystem and loss of production potential. Enhancing intrinsic yield, plant abiotic stress tolerance, and pest and pathogen resistance through agricultural biotechnology will be a critical part of feeding, clothing, and providing energy for the human population, and overcoming climate change. Development and commercialization of genetically engineered crops have significantly contributed to increase of crop yield and farmer's income, decrease of environmental impact associated with herbicide and insecticide, and to reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from this cropping area. Advances in plant genomics, proteomics and system biology have offered an unprecedented opportunities to identify genes, pathways and networks that control agricultural important traits. Because such advances will provide further details and complete understanding of interaction of plant systems and environmental variables, biotechnology is likely to be the most prominent part of the next generation of successful agricultural industry. In this article, we review the prospects for modification of agricultural target traits by genetic engineering, including enhancement of photosynthesis, abiotic stress tolerance, and pest and pathogen resistance associated with such opportunities and challenges under climate change.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• 제63권4호
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• pp.55-64
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• 2021

The expansion of upland crop cultivation in rice paddy fields is recommended by the Korean government to solve the problem of falling rice price and reduction of rice farmer's income due to oversupply of rice. However, water use efficiency is significantly influenced by the land use change from paddy field to upland. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the water budget of soybean grown in using APEX (Agricultural Policy and Environmental eXtender) model. The amount of runoff was measured in a test bed located in Iksan, Jeollabu-do and used to calibrate and validate the simulated runoff by APEX model. From 2019 to 2020, the water budget of soybean grown in uplands were estimated and compared with the one grown in paddy fields. The calibration result of AP EX model for runoff showed that R² (Coefficient of determination) and NSE (Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency) were 0.90 and 0.89, respectively. In addition, the validated results of R² and NSE were 0.81 and 0.62, respectively. The comparative study of each component in water budget showed that the amounts of evapotranspiration and percolation estimated by APEX model were 549.1 mm and 375.8mm, respectively. The direct runoff amount from upland was 390.1 mm, which was less than that from paddy fields. The average amount of irrigation water was 28.7 mm, which was very small compared to the one from paddy fields.

• Journal of Animal Reproduction and Biotechnology
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• 제36권1호
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• pp.35-44
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• 2021

A pregnancy diagnosis is an important standard for control of livestock's reproduction in paricular dairy cattle. High reproductive performance in dairy animals is a essential condition to realize of high life-time production. Pregnancy diagnosis is crucial to shortening the calving interval by enabling the farmer to identify open animals so as to treat or re-breed them at the earliest opportunity. MicroRNAs are short RNA molecules which are critically involved in regulating gene expression during both health and disease. This study is sought to establish the feasible of circulating miRNAs as biomarkers of early pregnancy in cattle. We applied Illumina small-RNA sequencing to profile miRNAs in plasma samples collected from 12 non-pregnant cows ("open" cows: samples were collected before insemination (non-pregnant state) and after pregnancy check at the indicated time points) on weeks 0, 4, 8, 12 and 16. Using small RNA sequencing we identified a total of 115 miRNAs that were differentially expressed weeks 16 relative to non-pregnancy ("open" cows). Weeks 8, 12 and 16 of pregnancy commonly showed a distinct increase in circulating levels of miR-221 and miR-320a. Through genome-wide analyses we have successfully profiled plasma miRNA populations associated with pregnancy in cattle. Their application in the field of reproductive biology has opened up opportunities for research communities to look for pregnancy biomarker molecules in dairy cattle.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• 제28권6호
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• pp.517-524
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• 2003

There have been worldwide research and development efforts to automate various processes of bio-production and those efforts will be expanded with priority given to tasks which require high intensive labor or produce high value-added product and tasks under hostile environment. In the field of bio-production capabilities of the versatility and robustness of automated system have been major bottlenecks along with economical efficiency. This paper introduces a new concept of automation based on tole-operation, which can provide solutions to overcome inherent difficulties in automating bio-production processes. Operator(farmer), computer, and automatic machinery share their roles utilizing their maximum merits to accomplish given tasks successfully. Among processes of greenhouse watermelon cultivation tasks such as pruning, watering, pesticide application, and harvest with loading were chosen based on the required labor intensiveness and functional similarities to realize the proposed concept. The developed system was composed of 5 major hardware modules such as wireless remote monitoring and task control module, wireless remote image acquisition and data transmission module, gantry system equipped with 4 d.o.f. Cartesian type robotic manipulator, exchangeable modular type end-effectors, and guided watermelon loading and storage module. The system was operated through the graphic user interface using touch screen monitor and wireless data communication among operator, computer, and machine. The proposed system showed practical and feasible way of automation in the field of volatile bio-production process.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• 제28권6호
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• pp.511-516
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• 2003

Computer vision technology has been utilized as one of the most powerful tools to automate various agricultural operations. Though it has demonstrated successful results in various applications, the current status of technology is still for behind the human's capability typically for the unstructured and variable task environment. In this paper, a man-machine interactive hybrid decision-making system which utilized a concept of tole-operation was proposed to overcome limitations of computer image processing and cognitive capability. Tasks of greenhouse watermelon cultivation such as pruning, watering, pesticide application, and harvest require identification of target object. Identifying water-melons including position data from the field image is very difficult because of the ambiguity among stems, leaves, shades. and fruits, especially when watermelon is covered partly by leaves or stems. Watermelon identification from the cultivation field image transmitted by wireless was selected to realize the proposed concept. The system was designed such that operator(farmer), computer, and machinery share their roles utilizing their maximum merits to accomplish given tasks successfully. And the developed system was composed of the image monitoring and task control module, wireless remote image acquisition and data transmission module, and man-machine interface module. Once task was selected from the task control and monitoring module, the analog signal of the color image of the field was captured and transmitted to the host computer using R.F. module by wireless. Operator communicated with computer through touch screen interface. And then a sequence of algorithms to identify the location and size of the watermelon was performed based on the local image processing. And the system showed practical and feasible way of automation for the volatile bio-production process.

• Research in Plant Disease
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• 제30권1호
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• pp.66-77
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• 2024

Black wood ear mushroom (Auricularia auricula-judae) is one of the most economically important mushrooms in China, Japan, and Korea. The cultivation of wood ear mushrooms on artificial substrates is more efficient in terms of time and cost compared with their natural growth on trees. However, if the substrate cultivation is infected by fast-growing fungi, the relatively slow-growing ear mushroom will be outcompeted, leading to economic losses. In this study, we investigated the competitive fungal isolates from substrates infected with fast-growing fungi for the cultivation of ear mushrooms in Jangheung and Sunchon, Korea. We collected 54 isolates and identified them by sequencing their internal transcribed spacer region with morphological identification. Among the isolates, the dominant isolates were Trichoderma spp. (92.6%), Penicillium spp. (5.6%), and Talaromyces sp. (1.8%). To find an appropriate eco-friendly biocontrol agent, we used five Streptomyces spp. and Benomyl, as controls against Trichoderma spp. and Penicillium spp. Among the six Streptomyces spp., Streptomyces sp. JC203-3 effectively controlled the fungi Trichoderma spp. and Penicillium spp., which pose a significant problem for the substrates of black wood ear mushrooms. This result indicated that this Streptomyces sp. JC203-3 can be used as biocontrol agents to protect against Trichoderma and Penicillium spp.

• Research in Plant Disease
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• 제12권3호
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• pp.158-163
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• 2006

Sclerotinia rot caused by Sclerotinia sclerotiorum frequently causes serious and unpredicable yield losses of the leaves of perilla growing under structured cultivation as vegetable in Korea. Temperature for mycelial growth ranged from 5 to $30^{\circ}C$ with optimum temperature d $20^{\circ}C$. Sclerotia were formed fewer at low temperature, but their dry weight was heavier than that at high temperature. The apothecia were formed from the sclerotia that buried up to 3 cm soil depth at $15^{\circ}C$ in moisture condition. The incidence of perilla Sclerotinia rot caused by S. sclerotiorum was observed throughout the growing season at greenhouse. The occurrence of this disease was especially severe from January to February of low temperature period. The average incidence rates of this disease was up to 15%. The significant occurrence of this disease was showed mainly in the continuous cropping field for more than five years. The incidence of this disease increased according to the increase of continuous cropping year. The incidence rates of this disease reached up to 20% in the continuous cropping field for ten years. Also it was firstly investigated the natural infection caused by S. sclerotiorum on weed plants, Gnaphalium affine and Mazus pumilus in farmer's field. The casual fungus showed pathogenicity on 11 weed plants species tested, and more severe pathogenicity on G. affine, Latuca indica and Ixeris dentata included in the family Compositae. This result suggests that effective crop rotation and weed eradication can be the method for organic control of perilla sclerotinia rot, and sudden outbreaks of this disease on perilla growing under structure after paddy rice call be explained by the presence of weed hosts.