At RIKEN Yokohama campus

 ━━━Why did you decide to become a scientist?

• I have a great interest in international cooperation and contribution to society. Actually, I organized a club to discuss about social issues with other students and teachers when I was an undergraduate student. I wanted to join JICA [Japan International Cooperation Agency, a government agency that provides developmental assistance to developing countries for the Japanese government] but I just realized that I couldn’t help many people with my own skills at that time. Rather, scientific discoveries have a potential to contribute to helping humankind globally. At that time science was my strength, so becoming a scientist was the only way for me to accomplish my mission in life.

 ━━━Why do you think Symbiosis reseach is important?

• Originally, I studied parasitic plants to contribute to solve food crisis in Africa, but there were already many researchers in that field so I wanted to open up a new research field by myself. Then I came up with an idea called “superorganism” that captures plant and microbiomes as one living organism. As the term symbiosis indicates, plants do not live alone like they do in the lab. Plants and microorganisms live together in the agricultural field and I believe that it’s important to understand the whole system. In addition, symbiosis exists everywhere, not only in plant-microbe interactions. A life never survives alone. Each individual interacts with each other. Science had been proceeding with reductionism and breaking things into a very small unit but science hasn’t focused on the so-called symbiotic relationship enough. The relationship doesn’t exist as a tangible object, which makes it challenging to study. But I believe that the most cutting-edge scientific technologies can break through such phenomena. We understand each individual phenomenon enough, so I think it’s a time to start dissecting the complicated relationship between individuals. When our understanding advances, I believe that we will be able to understand at system and network levels. For example, agriculture is very complicated so it’s impossible to understand fully by only understanding individual components like crops and weather. I believe that research of symbiosis will deepen our knowledge of agriculture systems. This is also being applied to understand, for example, the relationship between humans and their gut-living organisms.

━━━Lastly, please tell us about your goal.

• “Plant x Microbe = 21st century’s Green Revolution”
• I would like to research on the symbiotic relationship between plants and microbes and propose new agricultural methods that are friendly for the earth. The prior green revolution in the last century saw improved productivity of crops and development of new crop varieties. However, people depended too much on chemical fertilizer and this has damaged the land, for example, by soil contamination. Therefore, our generations must think about natural nutrient cycles as a next-generation agriculture. I believe that revealing the connection between plants and microbes will lead us to a 21st century Green Revolution.Especially, I focus on Mycorrhizal fungi which form symbiotic relationships with 70 to 80% of plants and most of them are thought to be a growth promotor. Even though there are many researchers who study Mycorrhizal fungi, we stilldon’t know the detailed functions of them in agricultural field. I believe that maximizing the effects of plant-microbe symbiology including Mycorrhizal fungi to the agriculture will contribute to the 21st green revolution.

 
━━━Thank you very much for your time, Dr. Yasunori Ichihashi! New leader sets sail on his voyage!

 
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