Rome, Italy
March, 2009
Source:
FAO -
Biotechnology in food and agriculture
Conference 16 of the FAO Biotechnology Forum takes place from 20
April to 17 May 2009 and its provisional title is "Learning from
the past: Successes and failures with agricultural
biotechnologies in developing countries over the last 20 years".
Biotechnology represents a broad collection of tools that can be
used for a variety of purposes, such as the genetic improvement
of plant varieties and animal populations to increase their
yields or the genetic characterisation and conservation of
genetic resources for food and agriculture. Some of them have
already been used for many years in a wide range of developing
countries. For example, a survey carried out by FAO nearly 20
years ago on the use of artificial insemination indicated that
over 16 million cattle were inseminated in developing countries
in 1990/1991.
The aim of the e-mail conference is to analyse past experiences
of applying different agricultural biotechnologies in developing
countries, to document and discuss what has succeeded or failed
and to determine and evaluate the key factors that were
responsible for their success or failure.
The conference will cover the different food and agricultural
sectors (crops, forestry, livestock, fisheries/aquaculture and
agro-industry) as well as the wide range of biotechnologies
normally covered in conferences of this FAO Biotechnology Forum
i.e. including some biotechnologies that may be applied to all
of the sectors, such as the use of genomics, molecular DNA
markers or genetic modification, and some others that are more
sector-specific, such as micropropagation (in crops and forest
trees), embryo transfer (livestock), or triploidisation and
sex-reversal (fish).
As usual, the conference is open to everyone, is free and will
be moderated.
To join the Forum (and also register for the conference), send
an e-mail to
mailserv@mailserv.fao.org leaving the subject blank and
entering the following text on two lines:
subscribe BIOTECH-L
subscribe biotech-room4
People who are already Forum members should
leave out the first line of the above message, to register for
the conference. For more information, contact
biotech-mod4@fao.org.
A Background
Document is being prepared and will be put on the Forum
website before the conference begins. Its aim is to provide some
brief background to the subject as well as to mention the issues
to be considered in the conference. As usual it is planned that
a document will be prepared after the e-mail conference is
finished summarising the main issues that were discussed.
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