Scientists have bred an improved variety of wheat that has proven to be 25% more productive in saline soils than its normal counterpart.

To produce the improved durum wheat, which is set to be made freely available to the developing world, the research team isolated two salt tolerance genes from an old species of wheat (Triticum monococcum),  and then introduced them into commercially important lines of Australian durum wheat (Triticum durum) using non-genetically modified methods. The genes limit the passage of sodium from the roots to leaves, where it can be toxic to the plant.

In an interview with electronic news network SciDev, GCP and ICARDA scientist Francis Obgbonnaya explains: “Unlike bread wheat, durum is generally intolerant to salinity so the first salt-tolerant durum line is a great achievement”.

For more information, please visit the SciDev website

The 5th World Cowpea Research Conference will be held from 27th September to 1st October 2010 in Dakar, Senegal. The conference, organised by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), in cooperation with the Dry Grain Pulses Collaborative Research Support Programme (USA), Purdue University (USA) and the Institut Senegalais de Recherches Agricoles (Senegal), will cover a wide variety of topics ranging from cowpea genetic improvement and use of molecular tools, through human nutrition, to processing and enterprise development.

For more information please visit the conference website

For more events of interest to the GCP research community and beyond, please visit our Events calendar. 

Following a number of international conferences of relevance to the GCP research community, we are pleased to inform you about the availability of books of abstracts from the following events:

• 2nd International Symposium on Genomics of Plant Genetic Resources (24–27 April 2010, Bologna, Italy): this conference, organised by Bioversity International, the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) and the University of Bologna, followed a tightly-packed agenda organised in nine different sessions, addressing themes such as 'harnessing plant diversity: From sequence to function' and 'genomics-assisted crop improvement for food security in developing countries', amongst others. The book of abstracts can be downloaded here. For more information, please consult the conference website.
• The Africa Rice Congress 2010 (22–26 March 2010, Bamako, Mali): organised by the Africa Rice Center, the congress' aim was to take stock of advances in rice science and technology aimed at enhancing rice productivity in farmers' fields, while protecting environmental services and coping with climate change. A 205-page publication, edited by P Kiepe, M Diatta and D Millar, containing abstracts from the congress, in English and French, is now available. The abstracts, many of which describe the use of biotechnologies in rice, are organised under six main themes, one of which is 'genetic diversity and improvement' (pages 1-59). To download the abstracts (available in French and English), please visit the Africa Rice Congress website.
• 6th International Rice Genetics Symposium (6–19 November 2009, Manila, The Philippines): organised by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), the symposium's aim was to 'showcase the latest developments in the field, including research on breeding, mapping of genes and quantitative trait loci, identification and cloning of candidate genes for biotic and abiotic stresses, gene expression, and genomic databases and mutant induction for functional genomics'. A 365-page publication is available, containing abstracts from the plenary, concurrent and poster sessions and from two workshops. The symposium was held in conjunction with the 7th International Symposium on Rice Functional Genomics. For the abstracts and more information, please visit the Symposium website.

We bring you this information courtesy of Update 4-2010 of FAO-BiotechNews, available at  http://www.fao.org/biotech/, to whom we are grateful for permission to reuse the item.

For details on other forthcoming events of relevance to the GCP research community, please visit our Events calendar webpage.

Plant scientists from around the world with an interest in molecular breeding will come together in Beijing, China, fom  5–9 September 2010 for the Third International Conference on Plant Molecular Breeding (ICPMB).

The scientific programme will include plenary sessions in the morning for four days and concurrent sessions/workshops and poster sessions in the afternoon.

Topics for the plenary sessions (one or two speakers on each subject) include:

A broad range of topics for the afternoon parallel sessions will be on offer.

Registration
Earlybird deadline (for reduced fee of US$550 for regular participants, US$650 for industry participants and US$350 for student participants) is 30th April 2010. For cost of registration before and after 31st July, please consult the Conference website.

Papers and abstracts

• Full length paper: The full length papers will be published in a special issue of Molecular Breeding, if the submission is accepted by the journal.
• Abstract: Abstracts will be collected and presented in the proceedings, which will be indexed in the Chinese Proceedings of the Conference. Full details on the required presentation of abstracts are on the Conference website.
• Deadline for submission of (voluntary) abstracts and posters: 15th August 2010

Fellowships
The conference will provide full or partial support to up to 15 researchers/students from developing countries in Africa and Asia. Applicants must submit research results to the conference in the form of an oral presentation or poster. Application should be submitted to Dr. Judy Lee at icpmb3@gmail.com or icpmb@thegsr.org before 30th April 2010. Acceptance letters with details will be sent to awardees by the end of July 2010.

For more information on the event and on how to apply, please visit the ICPMB website.

A press release from GCP partner HarvestPlus, a sister Challenge Programme of the CGIAR, has revealed the noteworthy findings of an international team of scientists, whereby their discovery of rare variations of a maize gene (crtRB1) can lead to an 18-fold increase in beta-carotene content of maize in an academic research setting. HarvestPlus reports that plant breeders are starting to use these naturally occurring genetic variations to breed maize that can provide more beta-carotene to malnourished people. The body converts beta-carotene into vitamin A. A deficiency in the vitamin affects millions of people in the developing world, and blinds up to 500,000 children annually, HarvestPlus explains.

More

The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has released, through the latest edition of its newsletter FAO-BiotechNews and via its website, a full report on the activities and outcomes of its recent conference entitled Agricultural biotechnologies in developing countries: Options and opportunities in crops, forestry, livestock, fisheries and agro-industry to face the challenges of food insecurity and climate change (ABDC-10), which took place in Guadalajara, Mexico, from 1–4 March 2010.

Approximately 300 people attended the event, comprising policy-makers, scientists and representatives of intergovernmental and international non-governmental organisations from 68 countries, including delegations nominated by 42 governments.

The conference consisted of a mixture of plenary and parallel sessions, with the plenary sessions examining issues such as how to target agricultural biotechnologies to the poor; how to enable research and development (R&D) in agricultural biotechnologies; and how to ensure that the benefits of R&D are accessible in developing countries. 27 parallel sessions were also held, opening discussions on sector-specific, regional or cross-sectoral issues.

To view the report, as well as full documentation from the conference, please visit the ABDC-10 section of the FAO website.