6th International Rice Genetics Symposium

The 6th International Rice Genetics Symposium is one of the world’s biggest and most important rice research conferences. Adding to its scope and significance, this event will be held in conjunction with the 7th International Symposium on Rice Functional Genomics. The four-day event builds on the excitement generated by rapid advances in rice genomics and its potential benefits to food security and the international rice industry. More than 700 top international scientists and researchers from around the world are expected to attend.

The symposium comes at a key time for the international rice industry, which is under unprecedented pressure caused by record high prices and major production challenges. It provides an important forum for reviewing the latest advances in rice research, how recent breakthroughs could affect global food security, and in-depth discussion and exchange of information on classical genetics and genomics. This major event will 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.

I welcome all rice research professionals to the 6th International Rice Genetics Symposium held in conjunction with 7th International Symposium on Rice Functional Genomics and Rice Annotation Project 6 Workshop (RAP6).

Robert S. Zeigler
Director General
International Rice Research Institute

ABOUT THE EVENT

This is the Sixth International Rice Genetics Symposium in the series of symposia held by IRRI every 4-5 years. The first international symposium held in 1985 led to the birth of the Rice Genetics Cooperative (RGC) for promoting international collaboration. The same year, the Rockefeller Foundation established the International Program on Rice Biotechnology, which has played a major role in advancing the frontiers of knowledge on cellular and molecular genetics of rice, international collaboration, and human resource development. In the second symposium, a unified system of numbering rice chromosomes and linkage groups was adopted. The orientation of classical and molecular maps was one of the many highlights of the third symposium. The fourth symposium brought together 520 rice scientists from 32 countries and provided an excellent forum for scientists from developed and developing countries to share information on the latest advances in rice science and to develop collaborative research projects. The fifth symposium attracted more than 700 rice scientists from 43 countries and featured world famous geneticists delivering plenary lectures covering a wide range of topics from classical genetics to the most advanced research on gene isolation and functional genomics.