Vegetable and Ornamental Horticulture Lab

AboutAbout the lab

Creating new varieties of vegetables and flowers.

The Vegetable and Ornamental Horticulture Lab aims to produce high-quality, safe vegetables and flowers inexpensively all year round.
Based on basic research, the lab develops new varieties and the systems to produce them.
It investigates at the gene level the pungent compounds of chili peppers, the flower color of dahlias and other flowers, and how Brassicaceae vegetables such as cabbage come into flower.
Undergraduates are assigned to the Plant Production Science Course in their third year, and to this field within the course in their fourth year (graduate school: Graduate School of Agriculture, Division of Agronomy and Horticultural Science).

ResearchResearch themes

The lab aims to produce high-quality, safe vegetables and flowers inexpensively all year round. Targeting the pungent compounds of chili peppers, new Solanaceae vegetables, the flower color of dahlias, and flowering in Brassicaceae vegetables, it works from basic research through to the development of new varieties and production systems.

*Illustrative image

Breeding for chili pepper pungency↗

The lab is working to clarify, using diverse genetic resources, the mechanisms that determine the amounts of capsaicin, the pungent compound, and capsiate, a much less pungent compound discovered through the lab's own research, and to apply this to breeding.

*Illustrative image

Solanaceae vegetables that grow in the field in winter↗

Fruit vegetables such as tomato are vulnerable to cold and are grown in greenhouses in winter. Focusing on underused Solanaceae plants that tolerate low temperatures, the lab aims to create new vegetables that can be grown in open fields in winter, using tools such as genome editing.

*Illustrative image

Dahlia flower color and black flowers↗

The lab identified DvIVS, the transcription factor that controls anthocyanin in dahlia flowers. It also showed that in black flowers, the gene for flavone synthase stops functioning, which causes large amounts of anthocyanin to accumulate.

*Illustrative image

Producing the yellow pigment butein↗

For butein, the pigment that gives dahlias a vivid yellow, the lab identified the gene DvAKR1, which is involved in synthesizing its precursor. It is now searching for genes important for glycosylation and accumulation.

VoicesStudent voices

Ratings and reviews reflect the experiences of individual current or former students, not the lab's official views. Whether a lab has reviews, or how many, says nothing about the lab itself.

Students who take part in an interview may receive a thank-you gift worth ¥1,000, regardless of what they say.