Highlights from the 2025 International Symposium on Rice Functional Genomics (ISRFG 2025)

Submitted by aolson on Fri, 09/12/2025 - 12:20

The 2025 International Symposium on Rice Functional Genomics (ISRFG 2025) was held in Chengdu, China, from August 23–27, 2025. Centered on the theme “Green and Nutritional Rice for Human Health and Sustainability,” the conference featured eight thematic sessions: Yield; Grain Nutrition and Quality; Biotic Interactions; Abiotic Stresses; Crosstalk of Multiple Processes; Functional Omics; Plant Nutrition and Development; and AI and Biotechnology. In addition, a dedicated Young Scientists Report Session highlighted advances in sustainability, gene editing, and bioinformatics.

ISRFG 2025 brought together more than 200 leading rice scientists and researchers from around the world. The program included 13 plenary lectures, over 70 concurrent talks, and 40 poster presentations, providing a comprehensive platform for sharing cutting-edge research and fostering international collaboration in rice genomics and improvement.

Sharon Wei, a member of the Ware Lab at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, presented the poster “Unifying Rice Diversity: The GrameneOryza 2025 Pan-Genome Platform for Research and Community Engagement,” which earned her third place among a highly competitive field of presenters.

Highlights from the plenary speakers included Dr. Rod Wing, who presented recent findings on Oryza tetraploid genomes; Dr. Haworth Bouise, an American economist, who discussed future directions for biofortification; Dr. Jauhar Ali from IRRI, who shared experiences in breeding environment-resilient, green, and nutritious “super rice”; and Dr. Yiwen Deng (Zhejiang University) and Dr. Xuewei Chen (Sichuan Agricultural University), who each spoke about their research on the area of broad-spectrum disease resistance and plant immunity.

Among the many excellent talks in the concurrent sessions, the following three were of particular interest to the Ware Lab. “Decoding and modeling the rice pan-regulome guides rational trait engineering” from Dr. Weibo Xie; “AI-driven phenotypic prediction models for rice” by Dr. Yong Zhou and “Roles of strigolactones in yield improvement of rice and tomato” by Dr. Bing Wang.

The symposium announced that next year’s meeting will be held in London, UK.