Rice and drought workshop held in Shanghai

An international workshop on rice and drought was organized by IRRI as a satellite event of the 3rd International Conference on Integrated Approaches to Improve Crop Production Under Drought-Prone Environments (InterDrought-III) held on 11-16 October in Shanghai, China.

Given the strategic importance of future research on water scarcity and rice in Asia and globally, a 1-day satellite event was organized by IRRI to discuss recent research breakthroughs and future prospects of drought-resistance frontiers in rice. The main purpose of the Rice & Drought satellite workshop was information sharing and coordination of the research activities of various ongoing projects on drought-resistance in rice (IRRI-Drought Frontier Project, BMGF-STRASA, GCP, SGR, etc.).

The workshop was organized by the IRRI drought research team (Drs. A. Kumar, Z.K. Li, K. McNally, A. Kohli, I. Slamet-Loedin, and R. Serraj) with Drs. Abraham Blum and Roberto Tuberosa, respective chairs of InterDrought-III and the following InterDrought-IV.

More than 50 participants attended the workshop, representing various disciplines involved in drought-resistance improvement (breeding, physiology, molecular genetics, and biotechnology) from international advanced research institutes and NARES partners.

The meeting had five technical sessions on (i) molecular breeding for drought-resistant rice; (ii) phenotyping and physiology; (iii) gene discovery, bioinformatics, and functional genomics; (iv) GM rice for drought; and (v) management of multilocation and PVS trials. This was followed by a general discussion of cross-cutting issues and drawing up of important recommendations for future research on drought in rice. InterDrought-III Web site