Tohoku Agricultural Research Center, NARO

The Lowland Crop Breeding Group is in charge of research on improvement in rice and soybean varieties. In recent years, there has been a growing demand for high-yielding, good-tasting varieties of rice, but it is also important to expand direct sowing cultivation, which enables large-scale or labor-saving cultivation, in order to reduce the agricultural labor force. Therefore, we have developed high-yielding, good-tasting rice cultivars suitable for direct sowing: "Chihominori" "Yumiazusa" and "Shifukunominori". In the Tohoku region, in addition to the already existing old issue of blast and cold damage, it is also necessary to cope with the degradation of quality caused by high temperature ripening, and we are conducting research to efficiently introduce resistance through DNA marker selection.
The stable production of soybeans in cold climates is also an important issue, due to the growing demand for soybeans because of increasing health consciousness. Hence, we are working to develop high- yielding soybean varieties with high quality. Specifically, we are working to develop varieties with enhanced resistance to diseases and insect damage such as soybean mosaic disease and soybean cyst nematode, varieties with mechanization adaptability such as pod dehiscence resistance and lodging resistance, and varieties with high yield such as high pod set richness. We are also focusing on the development of DNA marker selection technology to ensure the successful breeding of these varieties.