Dear colleagues!

The International Conference “Wheat genetic resources and genomics” (August 28 – September 1, 2011, Institute of Cytology and Genetics, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, http://www.bionet.nsc.ru/wgrg/Index-Engl.html) has been successfully completed.
The Conference discussed the following issues:

(1) Utilization of wheat genetic resources in breeding.
(2) Wheat evolution and taxonomy.
(3) Genetics and breeding in a changing environment.
(4) Biotechnology and molecular-genetic methods for new genotypes development.
(5) Bioinformatics and genomics.

The Conference was attended by 90 participants, including 23 participants who arrived to Novosibirsk from other cities (4 Russia cities) and countries (9 countries).

The Conference presented state-of-the-art results in the field of wheat biotechnology, genomics, genetics and breeding and discussed the promising directions of collaboration in basic and applied aspects of wheat genome research. On August, 26-30, 2011, the Young Scientists School “Bioinformatic methods and next generation sequence technologies” took place within the frames of the conference The Russian-French round table discussion was organized during the conference. Among the participants of the Round table were representatives of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics (Novosibirsk, Russia), the Krasnodar Research Agricultural Institute by name P.P. Lukianenko (Krasnodar, Russia), the N.I. Vavilov All Russian Institute of Plant Industry (Saint-Petersburg, Russia) and of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (Paris/ Clermont-Ferrand, France). The Conference proceedings book includes 64 abstracts of the participants. The conference was concluded with the discussion on further co-operation in the field of wheat biotechnology, genomics, genetics and breeding.

The conference conclusion remarks were as follows:

 

1. The Conference’s work was successful and fruitful.
2. It is advisable to organize the Conference on a biennial basis.
3. To create working group coordinating cooperation between Russian wheat geneticists and breeders.
4. It is recommended to prepare a special issue of the “Russian Journal of Genetics: Applied Research” on the basis of selected works of the “Wheat genetic resources and genomics” conference participants.

For further remarks, proposals and discussion, please write to e-mail: wheatgen@bionet.nsc.ru