Meeting the food demands of an ever-increasing population based on resource availability and environmental sustainability poses major challenges to agriculture worldwide. Rice is a staple food crop in most countries in Asia and its production in a sustainable manner is of paramount importance for feeding a growing global population. Therefore, it is urgent to breed new high-yielding rice varieties with superior grain quality, multiple biotic and abiotic stress-tolerant traits, and high resource-use efficiency. The development of crop breeding and the seed industry largely depends on exploring favorable genes from crop germplasm resources. It has become important for crop geneticists and breeders to deeply explore the naturally occurring alleles and breeding values of essential genes in the rice germplasm banks. There are enormous numbers of rice accessions and wild relatives in germplasm banks, but less than 5% of them are exploited for in-depth research and utilized. We must find efficient ways to explore the desirable genes in the germplasm resources for developing rice varieties to address the problems facing sustainable agriculture and human consumption needs, which have become the frontier in crop scientific research and agricultural industrialization. It is feasible to evaluate germplasm resources efficiently and accurately with the rapid development of functional genomics, phenomics, and metabolomics with high-throughput technologies, further promoting the discovery, identification, and utilization of excellent genes from the germplasm resources.

The international symposium will be held in Wuhan from 5th through 7th September 2023, and is sponsored by Huazhong Agricultural University and the National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement and funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Professor Qifa Zhang will serve as the Chairman of this conference. The symposium aims to bring together different disciplines and research areas of germplasm genomics and molecular breeding to provide healthier and more nutritious products for human consumption while ensuring greener and more sustainable rice production. This international symposium will cover a broad range of topics in germplasm genomics, highlighting the theme of advanced strategies and technologies to efficiently identify functional genes associated with green traits, resource-efficient, high yield, nutritious grain quality, and exploiting excellent germplasms and superior rare variants for rice genomic breeding. The outcomes are expected to broaden collaborative projects and deepen partnerships to provide elite genic resources and technical support for developing and applying new varieties with desirable green and nutritious grain quality that will tremendously contribute to improving rice crop production in countries along the Belt and Road Initiative. More than 12 invited speakers are expected to present their latest advances in rice genomics, germplasm enhancement, genomic breeding for green and nutritious products. More than 100 scientists from research institutes and universities at home and abroad will attend this international conference.

Offline meeting:

Address: Conference Hall, National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic
Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University, Hongshan District, Wuhan

Conference Date

	Beijing Time	Chicago Time	Berlin Time
day1	2023/9/6 8:30-18:00	19:30 PM to 5:00 AM Sep. 5-6, 2023	2:30 AM to 12:00 AM Sep. 6, 2023
day2	2023/9/7 8:30-10:30	19:30 PM to 21:30 AM Nov Sep. 7, 2023	2:30 AM to 4:30 AM Nov Sep. 7, 2023

Organizer:
The National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement (Huazhong Agricultural University)

Prof. Qifa Zhang (Huazhong Agricultural University)

Prof. Shaobing Peng (Huazhong Agricultural University)

Dr. Jauhar Ali (International Rice Research Institute)

Dr. Lizhong Xiong (National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement)

Dr. Xingwang Li (Huazhong Agricultural University)

Dr. Sibin Yu (Huazhong Agricultural University)

Dr. Weibo Xie (Huazhong Agricultural University)