Half-day Seminar on “Science and Plant Biotechnology”
Half-day seminar on Plant Science and Biotechnology was held on Friday, January 7th, 2011 at the Auditorium of Andi Hakim Nasution, Darmaga campus of IPB. It is part of the cooperation between the Research Center of Biological Resources and Biotechnology (PPSHB) IPB and the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), Japan through the JSPS-DGHE Joint Research Project and supported by the Japan Science and Technology (JST) Project.
The seminar was attended by about 200 people, coming from various institutions such as IPB, LIPI, Institute for Agricultural Research and Developments and foreign guests from NAIST, Plant High-Technology Ltd. (Japan), University of Ryukyus (Japan), RIKEN (Japan), and the University of Kasersart (Thailand). It was opened and chaired by the Head of PPSHB IPB, Dr. Suharsono. In his opening Dr. Suharsono said the development of cooperation with NAIST began with the signing of the MoU between IPB and NAIST in 2007. A year later (2008), this MoU was followed up with the research collaboration on the topic "Molecular Breeding of High-Yield Energy Plants and Reforestation" which received competitive funds from JST, the Ministry of Education, Youth, Sports and Technology (MEXT, Japan). To strengthen this research, in 2009, the cooperation was supported by a competitive funding through JSPS -DGHE Joint Research Project on the topic "Molecular Adaptation of Jatropha curcas to Acid Soil for Reforestation of Tropical Wast
elands." With the support of both projects, several researchers and doctoral students of IPB and NAIST have visited each other and conducted research. Both research collaborations are very beneficial especially for IPB in improving the quality of research and accelerating the study period of doctoral students. In addition, continued Dr. Suharsono, IPB and NAIST cooperation also includes organization of joint seminars, exchange of scientists and doctoral students, and sending of scholarship students. From 2007 to 2010, IPB has sent four teaching staff to take doctoral education in NAIST with the scholarships from the project of "Global Center of Excellence (GCoE)" NAIST and Lida Foundation. IPB had also sent four doctoral students to NAIST to conduct research funded by the Sandwich Program, Directorate General of Higher Education, and JSPS (Japan Society for Promotion of Science). The seminar supported by such cooperation is held every year in IPB.
After the opening, the seminar continued with the first presentation on the topic "Molecular Mechanism of xylem development" by Prof. T. Demura (NAIST). The result of the research by Prof. Demura is very interesting for application in the biotechnology of woody plants, for both pulp and paper industry as well as the production of biomass for bioenergy purposes. Through the isolation of genes and recombinant DNA technology, the growth of woody plants can be accelerated.
The second presentation was on the topic: "Chloroplast Ribosomal System for RuBisCO Synthesis" by Dr K. Nishimura (NAIST). By engineering on RuBisCO in the chloroplast, the production of proteins for drug can be produced efficiently in plants. The third topic was "Evolution of RuBisCo in CO2/O2 reaction specificity" presented by Dr. T. Nakano (NAIST). And the last presenter was Dr. J. Kikuchi (RIKEN), who discussed the topic of: "Multidimensional NMR metabolismics for plants". The results of the research on metabolismics and transcriptomics in various stages of fruit development of Jatropha starting from flowering to the physiological maturity of fruit are very important to the improvement of crop production, increase in the fat content, and the manipulation of the composition of fats in Jatropha seeds.
This seminar has provided the latest information about the development of science and plant biotechnology.
