Plant mutation reports. Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2006

Just before going to press, an administrative/technical issue prevented us from continuing to use the title, Mutation Breeding Newsletter and Review (MBN and R) for our publication. After discussions, we decided, from this issue on, to use the title, Plant Mutation Reports (PMR) to replace the MBN and R. We will continue to strive to improve the quality of Plant Mutation Reports towards a periodical of higher scientific value, as a specialized international journal on plant mutation research and its application in crop improvement. At its fifty-seventh session in December 2002, the United Nations General Assembly designated 2004 as the International Year of Rice (IYR), originally proposed by the FAO. The declaration reflects the importance of rice for global food security, poverty alleviation and sustainable development. Rice is the staple food of more than half of the world's population; rice cultivation, products and traditions attached to the crop have become an integral part of the world's cultural heritage. In most Asian countries, the significance of rice in people's daily life and culture is much more pronounced than on any other continents. The Agency has long been involved in assisting Member States in enhancing capacities on genetic improvement of crop plants, including rice, using nuclear techniques. During the past 40 years, more than 20 national and regional technical cooperation projects on rice improvement using nuclear techniques were implemented in almost all of the rice growing developing countries in Asia, which has greatly advanced the development and application of nuclear techniques in rice improvement and prompted the beneficial exchange of mutant germplasm in this region. The FAO/IAEA/RCA 'Strategic Meeting on Nuclear Techniques for Rice Improvement in Asia'- was organized in conjunction with the World Rice Research Conference in Japan on 6 November 2004 to fully review the economic benefits from the adoption of mutant rice varieties and the current status of induced mutations in rice germplasm enhancement, new variety development and functional genomics studies, and future perspectives of nuclear and related techniques in rice breeding and genetics. The Agency through RCA Project RAS/5/040 and National TC Projects VIE/5/014 and PAK/5/042, sponsored 15 participants. The host institute, the Institute of Radiation Breeding, National Institute of Agrobiological Resources, Japan, also invited and sponsored 5 Japanese participants. The participants presented their work on rice mutation breeding, new mutation techniques, biological basis of induced mutations, novel mutants for rice improvement and functional genomics research. Inside this issue, you will find the complete papers of some of the presentations. You will not only have an overview of the application of mutation techniques in rice breeding in these countries, but you will also be able to envision the future perspectives of nuclear techniques in rice improvement. We also included a few papers that were not presented in the meeting but are relevant to this theme and are beneficial for you to get a broader view. Based on my communications with these authors and my understanding of these papers, I got the following impressions on mutation techniques in rice improvement which I would like to share with you: (1) Mutation techniques can be successfully deployed even in institutes with limited infrastructure and laboratory facilities, a common situation in developing countries, which is a very important feature that made this technology widely accepted in almost all countries; (2) Mutation techniques have proven not only useful for improving agronomic traits, i.e., yield, plant height, growth duration, etc, but also for enhancing resistance to biotic stress such as disease and insect pests and tolerance to abiotic stress such as salinity and acidic soil; (3) Mutation techniques have also proven very useful in quality improvement, i.e. development of rice varieties with preferred amylose content, and probably more importantly, enhancing nutrition al value of rice grains, i.e., reducing phytic acid content, with giant embryos and thus high GABA content, and increased resistant starch content; (4) Mutation techniques have been used as the sole technique for the improvement of special rice type, i.e., Basmati rice in India and Pakistan, and aromatic rice in Viet Nam; (5) Mutation induction has become an important tool in gene discovery and functional genomics studies, more and more mutant lines are being generated and analyzed worldwide; last but not least, (6) The IAEA, through collaboration with FAO, has directly (through TCPs) and indirectly (through information and knowledge dissemination) contributed to the deployment of mutation techniques in many countries, which is highly appreciated by many authors in their papers