A joint meeting of the Japanese Wheat Genetics Symposium and Triticeae Molecular Biology Workshop, November 27-28, 2004

Hisashi Tsujimoto (Faculty of Agriculture, Tottori University, Tottori 680-8553, Japan. E-mail: tsujim@muses.tottori-u.ac.jp)

A joint meeting of the 29th Japanese Wheat Genetics Symposium (JWGS) and 9th Triticeae Molecular Biology Workshop (TMBW) was held in Tottori, in November 27 and 28,2004. The local organizing committee consisting of H. Tsujimoto (Chairman) and H. Tanaka were in charge of its organization and management. Ninety-nine researchers and students discussed on the following three topics. 1) Where is the interphase between genomics and production of wheat and barley? 2) New aspect of germplasm exploration, and 3) Insight from chromosome research. In addition, 18 posters and 18 preliminary reports were presented. All the attendees stayed together in Hotel Hope Star Tottori, enjoyed the meal, hot spring, and talking till all hours of the night. In the business session several agenda were discussed, and an agreement about the form and the site of the next meeting were made: From the next meeting JWGS and TMBW will be united and held in Kyoto Prefectural University in 2005 by Prof. Y. Ogihara. Followings are the abstracts of the symposia and poster presentation of this joint meeting.

Symposium I.
Where is the interphase between genomics and production of wheat and barley?

S-1-1 T. Kaneko (Bioresources Research and Development Laboratories, Sapporo Breweries LTD)
Barley material and brewering process

Beer is one of most popular alcohol beverage in the world. Malt which is produced from germinated barley (Hordeum vulgare) is an important raw material for beer brewing. It is not only a source of carbohydrate for yeast fermentation, which also plays functional rules of enzyme degradation and conversion of starch, protein and other seed contents to substances for brewing process. These complicate traits affect the character and quality of beer products. Therefore, continuous and various efforts have been paid for establish "malting" barley. The development of brewing technology causes new demand for the malting barley. The malting barley breeding applied with new technologies will continue as long as the brewing industry is developing.

S-1-2 K. Hatta (National Agricultural Research Organization, National Agricultural Research Center for Kyusyu and Okinawa region)
What would be demanded of anything or anyone in the connection of breeding objects and ideal genotypes in wheat?

At present, breeding of wheat is carried out at five National Agricultural Research Centers and at four Agricultural Experiment Stations in prefecture as a part of a national project in Japan. The breeding object of these programs is simple and clear: to produce the wheat varieties which have a high quality same as the imported wheat brand, ASW. Recently, we have got a powerful selection tool, the molecular technique, which is still being developed. It seemed that this tool brought a kind of dawn in the breeding world, but adoption of the molecular technique to practical wheat breeding has been limited in Japan. One possible reason, especially in hexaploid wheat, would be the unclear relation between phenotypes we are looking for and ideal genotypes for them. To assist discussion of how we can take advantage of this technique practically, I introduce our classical selection methods for noodle qualities and some trials utilizing molecular assisted selection in our breeding programs.