The 13th International Symposium on Rice Functional Genomics

The 13th International Symposium on Rice Functional Genomics (ISRFG) conference was organized by the National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement at Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan, China, from the 21st to the 24th of September 2015. The theme of the conference was "Rice Genome and Technology: Feeding the Billions".  ~400 researchers including 55 invited speakers from various institues across the globe participated in meeting in sessions covering basic research to field trials, such as genomes, diversity and evolution of rice cultivars and its wild relatives; biotic and abiotic stress response mechanisms in rice; plant development and cell signaling; community resources for rice researchers; and Green Super Rice: an application of rice functional genomics. Dr. Sushma Naithani (Gramene, Oregon State University) gave a talk entitled “Exploring intersections between seed development and stress-responses” and showed utility of Gramene’s Plant Reactome database for probing gene-networks associated with an important biological mechanism. In addition, researchers can explore 'resources and tools available for rice community' at Gramene data base. Prof. Rod A. Wing (University of Arizona), a collaborator of Gramene on Oryza Genome Evolution (OGE)  project, gave a talk entitled “Harnessing Oryza natural variation to help solve the 9.6-billion people question'. Gramene also presented a poster on Oryza genome evolution entitled "oge.gramene.org: A comprehensive platform for studying Oryza Genome Evolution" by Wei et al. in collaboration with OGE and I-OMAP projects.