The Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) and Japanese cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa) are important timber species, accounting for the majority of planted forests in Japan. Although cedar is considered to be endemic to Japan, it is also used as a timber resource in subtropical regions such as India and Taiwan. In a study published in the international journal PLOS ONE, we compared various physiological and ecological traits of Japanese cedar and Japanese cypress using a large database of literature published over the past 70 years. Such a database can be used to make better predictions of climate change impacts on forest ecosystems and to develop more climate-resilient forest management practices. A similar database is urgently needed for tropical trees.

On January 13, 2022, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and other U.S. research organizations announced that 2021 was the sixth warmest year on record and that ocean heat content (OHC), which measures the amount of heat that accumulates on the surface of the ocean, was at an all-time high. The year 2021 is the warmest year on record under La Niña, and the past eight years have been the warmest consecutive years on record.

The CGIAR is an international organization established in 1971 for the purpose of improving the productivity and technological development of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries in developing countries, and 15 centers under its umbrella (as of 2020) function as independent research institutions. As a frontier of international agricultural research, these centers contribute to solving global food and environmental problems in line with various themes such as crops, livestock, forest, fisheries and natural resource management. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of CGIAR in 2021, we have compiled the scientific contributions and major achievements of Japanese and Japanese researchers in CGIAR institutions as a special issue of the Japan Agricultural Research Quarterly (JARQ), and all the papers have now been published on the JIRCAS website.

As we enter the year 2022, an editorial article in Nature cited the emergence of new coronavirus variant and the issue of vaccine disparities, as well as developments in international goals at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as scientific events to watch in 2022. This year, we will continue to provide information on global issues related to agriculture, forestry and fisheries, such as climate change and food systems.