International Cooperation

TLL - Symposium

"Plant Science Communications 2010"


Organizers	Masayoshi Kawaguchi (NIBB), Mitsuyasu Hasebe (NIBB), Kiyotaka Okada (NIBB)
Venue	Okazaki Conference Center, Okazaki, Japan
Date	Nov. 16-18, 2010
Link	Symposium Website　（http://www.nibb.ac.jp/plant2010/）
	Symposium Website　（http://www.nibb.ac.jp/plant2010/）

Based on agreements on international academic collaboration with the Max-Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research (MPIPZ, Germany) and the Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL, Singapore) formalized in 2009 and 2010, respectively, the 2nd international joint symposium titled “Plant Science Communications 2010” was held from the 16th through 18th of November 2010 at the Okazaki Conference Center. It included 11 speakers, mainly Principal Investigators (PIs), from MPIPZ and 5 PIs from TLL plant science laboratories as well as 8 speakers from NIBB plant science laboratories. In addition, 6 select researchers from JSPS Machida Plant Meristem Project joined and spoke at the symposium. The number of participants was more than a hundred.

The symposium was successfully managed by young assistant professors from plant science laboratories in NIBB. There were lively discussions of the latest results during and after the talks. The topics were focused on development, natural variation, plant-microbe interaction and epigenetics. It was impressive that large-scale analyses using next-generation sequencing technology are becoming a standard in the research done at MPIPZ. The poster session included 47 posters by young plant scientists, and active discussions until the end of the session. An NIBB Lab Tour Session was organized for the morning of the second day to provide time for discussion of future collaborations between the attendants and NIBB researchers. The representatives of the three institutes, NIBB, MPIPZ and TLL, pledged to keep supporting this symposium as a center for collaboration between plant scientists from Japan, Germany and Singapore.