Plant Abiotic Stress and Sustainable Agriculture: Translating Basic Understanding to Food Production

Organizer(s): Julia Bailey-Serres and Mike Hasegawa

Sponsored by Monsanto Company

Summary of Meeting:

The world must immediately increase global crop production to meet the food, fiber and biofuel demands of our growing population. This challenge is complicated by a decline in arable farmland due to human occupancy and soil degradation. Crop production is also compromised by an increased occurrence of severe weather events due to global climate change. To meet human needs, major crops must be rapidly modified to ensure productivity in extreme environments. A major target is the improvement of tolerance to abiotic stresses including extremes in water availability and temperature, as well as soil contamination by salts, phosphate and heavy metals. Allied with abiotic stress tolerance is the need to improve crop yields in nutrient-poor soils. Genetic diversity for stress tolerance and nutrient acquisition exists within some crop species. The molecular genetic basis of this diversity is being identified and harnessed into cultivars by marker-assisted breeding. The use of functional genomics to dissect abiotic stress sensing and signaling networks and the downstream adjustments in metabolism and development can provide additional solutions for crop improvement through genetic engineering. The emergence of deep-sequencing promises to permit rapid exploration of abiotic tolerance mechanisms of non-crop plants. Finally, the efforts to precisely define abiotic stress tolerance mechanisms can aid the effective pyramiding of multiple tolerances in a single plant. This Keystone Symposia conference will highlight progress in the dissection of the molecular basis of abiotic stress tolerance and the practices that enable rapid translation of abiotic stress tolerance to the farmer’s field.

Scholarship Deadline: September 19 2012

Discounted Abstract Deadline: September 19 2012

Abstract Deadline: October 18 2012

Discounted Registration Deadline: November 14 2012

Keystone Symposia thanks our Sponsor(s) for generously supporting this meeting:

We gratefully acknowledge additional support for this conference from:

We gratefully acknowledge additional in-kind support for this conference from those foregoing speaker expense reimbursements:

Monsanto Company

Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc.

We gratefully acknowledge the generous grant for this conference provided by:

National Science Foundation (NSF)
Grant No. IOS-1263471
The views expressed in written conference materials or publications and by speakers and moderators do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the National Science Foundation; nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

We appreciate the organizations that provide Keystone Symposia with additional support, such as marketing and advertising:

Click here to view more of these organizations

Special thanks to the following for their support of Keystone Symposia initiatives to increase participation at this meeting by scientists from underrepresented backgrounds:

Click here to view more of these organizations