Davis, California
September 4, 2007
Seeds and global agriculture are
focus on international symposium
 The
four-day symposium, "Translational Seed Biology: From Model
Systems to Crop Improvement," is hosted by the UC Davis
Plant Sciences Department. It will be held on campus in Freeborn
Hall, with a tour of Sacramento Valley seed-production
operations planned for Sept. 20.
"This international symposium will focus on how fundamental
knowledge of seed biology can be transferred into practical use
to improve the agricultural and nutritional value of crops,"
said Kent Bradford, conference coordinator and director of UC
Davis' Seed Biotechnology Center.
"The ability to modify seeds with specific changes provides
enormous potential to meet the growing global demand for food
and improved nutrition, but only if research discoveries can be
adapted to the biological requirements of seeds and to the
practical economic demands of the marketplace," Bradford said.
The symposium will bring together scientists who study
fundamental aspects of seed biology as well as crop scientists
and breeders who use that knowledge to develop new crop
varieties. The meeting coordinators anticipate that this broad
range of symposium participants will identify high-priority
challenges and opportunities for future crop research and
development.
Keynote speaker for the conference's opening evening session on
Sept.
17 will be Rob Horsch, director of agricultural programs for the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Horsch will discuss the
critical role of seed improvement in global agriculture.
Other conference speakers will include:
- Robert Goldberg, a
professor and plant scientist at UCLA. Goldberg is an
elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and a
Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher. He developed a
hybridization system that works universally in major crop
plants. (Tuesday morning)
- Jorge Dubcovsky, a
UC Davis wheat geneticist and breeder. He recently
identified a gene that can increase the protein and
micronutrient content of wheat grains, and is studying the
evolution of wheat during its domestication. (Tuesday
afternoon)
- Christina Walters
of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Center for
Genetic Resources Preservation in Ft. Collins, Colo. She
studies the mechanisms by which seeds age and die during
storage. The center, known as the "Fort Knox of seeds," is
the primary repository in the United States for plant seeds
and other plant hereditary material. (Wednesday morning)
- Maarten Koornneef,
director of the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding
Research in Cologne, Germany. He is internationally
recognized for developing the small, rapidly growing
Arabidopsis thaliana plant as a model genetic system for
plant research. Koornneef, a foreign member of the National
Academy of Sciences, has identified a number of specific
genes that regulate seed germination and dormancy.
(Wednesday afternoon)
- Yuji Kamiya,
director of the growth regulation research group at the
RIKEN Plant Science Center, a major Japanese research center
in Yokohama, Japan. He is an international leader in
identifying the natural plant hormones that regulate the
development and germination of seeds. (Wednesday afternoon)
- Jorge Mayer, a
biochemist and manager of the Golden Rice Humanitarian
Foundation in Freiburg, Germany, which seeks to
commercialize rice that is biofortified with beta-carotene,
the precursor to vitamin A. (Wednesday evening banquet)
- T.J. Higgins,
Deputy Chief of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial
Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Canberra, Australia. He has
developed cowpea seeds that are resistant to insects that
consume them during storage and seeds that have increased
nutritional content. (Thursday morning)
- Roger Beachy, a
distinguished plant scientist who led the research team that
developed the world's first genetically modified food crop,
a tomato variety modified for resistance to viral disease.
Beachy, an elected member of the National Academy of
Sciences, is the founding president of the not-for-profit
Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Mo.
(Thursday morning)
A complete conference program and
list of speakers is available online at <http://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/seedsymposium2007/> |
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