An international meeting to share knowledge on how to balance agricultural production and environmental conservation in tropical islands was held a year ago with participants from the Okinawa Prefectural Government, Ishigaki City Government, and the Department of Agriculture, Republic of the Philippines. A video presented at the meeting featuring efforts to protect the beautiful nature and precious blessings of the land and sea in Okinawa has been released with English subtitles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HryGEBnzU2E

The JIRCAS International Symposium 2022 “Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture in the Sustainable Food Systems” was held in hybrid format at Hitotsubashi Hall, Hitotsubashi University and online on November 22, 2022 under the auspices of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) and the Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency (FRA).

Dr. TAKARAGAWA Hiroo, Researcher at the JIRCAS Tropical Agriculture Research Front  (TARF), received the Best Presentation Award (Oral), for his research achievement titled “Responses of gas exchange and metabolites to drought stress in sugarcane and Erianthus" (H. Takaragawa and M. Wakayama) presented at the 254th Annual Meeting of the Crop Science Society of Japan (CSSJ) held on September 20-21, 2022.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) has issued the "Cozzarelli Prize” certificate  for the best paper of 2021, which has now been awarded to the recipients from JIRCAS.

Two JIRCAS research projects adopted in FY2021 under the Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development (SATREPS) program jointly implemented by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) have been approved by the partner countries and will now officially start joint research, replacing the previous conditional collaboration.

The JIRCAS Tropical Agriculture Research Front (TARF) held the international meeting with the theme “Balancing Agricultural Production and Environmental Conservation on Tropical Islands” on February 14, 2022. The representatives from the local government offices of Okinawa Prefecture and Ishigaki City participated onsite, and the representatives from the Department of Agriculture of the Philippines joined online.

JIRCAS, in collaboration with the FAO Liaison Office in Japan, organized the Symposium “Fruits and Vegetables - Research and Opportunities for Human and Planetary Health” online on December 6, 2021. This symposium was an official side event of the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit (N4G), which took place on December 7 and 8, 2021.

The JIRCAS Tropical Agriculture Research Front (TARF) held the 15th Open House for a week from November 8 (Mon) to 14 (Sun), 2021, to introduce the research activities of TARF to the citizens of Ishigaki City and the general public. As it was the first time for the event to be held online, we devised the contents of the exhibition and introduction so that everyone could enjoy it, and the entire event received a total of 2,765 accesses from Japan and overseas. Thank you very much for your participation.

In November 2021, Dr. FUJITA Yasunari, Project Leader of the Bioresources and Post-harvest Division of JIRCAS, has been selected by Clarivate Analytics of the USA as a Highly Cited Researcher in the field of Plant and Animal Sciences for the eighth consecutive year.

Dr. TORIYAMA Kazunobu, former Director of the Crop, Livestock and Environment Division, and his colleagues have been awarded the 2020 Best Paper of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition  (SSPN Award) for their paper "Contribution of fallow weed incorporation to nitrogen supplying capacity of paddy soil under organic farming".