2009 ACPFG Genomics Symposium - The Genomics of Salinity

Deadlines

30 September 2009	31 October 2009
Abstracts for posters & presentations close	Registrations close

Symposium Sponsors

2009 ACPFG Genomics Symposium. The Genomics of Salinity.

This year, the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics, has based its annual symposium on the Genomics of Salinity.

Why salinity?

• It is estimated that salinity costs the Australian grain grower in the order of $200m annually, and it is a problem that is worsening.

• Salinity affects nearly all grain producing areas every year.

• Salinity interacts with other stresses such as drought, reducing the ability of plants to tolerate those other stresses.

Salinity is not only an issue for Australian farmers:

• It is one of the most important abiotic constraints on cereal yield in world agriculture.

• In particular, 20% of irrigated land is salt affected, a number which is inevitably increasing.

• One third of the world's food is produced on irrigated land.

Given the impact and severity of salinity, an abiotic stress characterised by increases in a range of ions and osmotic pressure, researchers need to work together to develop innovative solutions - for researchers, farmers and consumers. The ACPFG Genomics Symposium this year will generate an atmosphere for open discussion and vigorous debate around the genomics of plant responses to salinity. This Symposium will bring together leading national and international researchers to exchange innovative ideas and latest research.

Please refer to the Symposium Brochure for further details (e.g. social events, accommodation, information about poster sessions).

APPF Workshop - How can The Plant Accelerator address biological problems?

The aims of this one day workshop are:

• to introduce researchers to current applications of The Plant Accelerator's capabilities,

• to develop ideas interactively for new experiments and new ways to benefit from this new facility,

• to help people conceive and design experiments using The Plant Accelerator,

• to encourage researchers to undertake preliminary experiments to learn the Facility's capabilities and obtain preliminary results to support grant applications.

Ideal number of participants:
A maximum of 20 participants will facilitate discussions

Target audience:
Graduate students and postdocs - group leaders welcome, too!

The day will start with a small number of talks outlining:

• the overall capability of the Facility,

• some specific experiments that have been undertaken with the Facility's equipment,

• the central importance of data management and analysis.

We then envisage breaking up into small groups of people with common interests and problems to ‘workshop' ideas for a couple of hours, then groups report back to the overall group, before breaking out again for further more detailed discussions, perhaps with group compositions changing at this stage.

The day will be pulled together to try to synthesise the outputs of the discussions and discuss plans for future work in The Accelerator.

Registration to the workshop is through the ACPFG Genomics Symposium registration process. Please refer to the Symposium Brochure for details.