Nutriomics Approach on Chinese Cabbage Breeding

Development of nutriomics in relation to functional foods is becoming an imperative issue for human health. Brassica species have a lot of attention as important vegetables containing very high amounts of functional compounds such as glucosinolates, β-carotene, lutein, phenolic acids, flavonoids, etc. Since the draft sequencing of the Chinese cabbage genome was completed, functional genomics research has been rapidly expanded to understand metabolic pathways and regulatory mechanisms of related genes. Since the establishment of Korea Brassica Genome Resource Bank in 2004, our research group has supported genomic materials for Multinational Brassica Genome Sequencing Project and collected over 10,000 accessions of Brassicas from different areas in the world. Meantime, Collected germplasms were analyzed for their functional compounds and selected the accessions which have high level of functional compounds, such as glucosinolates, vitamins, β-carotene, lutein, flavonol, Fe, Ca, etc. With the accessions and microspore culture, we have developed doubled haploid lines and finally selected inbred lines containing high concentration of specific compounds. Our research group also analyzed the metabolic pathways and functions of genes related to the production of secondary metabolites; i.e., identification of 39 full length CDs for carotenoids from Brassica. Further study of the genetically fixed lines with specific amount of functional compounds under controlled environment cultivation system would produce more significant data for the nutriomics research.