Joint AGRISAFE - EUCARPIA Workshop for Young Cereal Scientists: "Climate Change and Plant Breeding Answers" March 20, 2011

Climate variability has a fundamental influence on agro-ecosystems. For a substantial part of Europe, climate change scenarios forecast significant decreases of up to 20% in plant productivity, coupled with a general decline in the stability of agricultural ecosystems. This is particularly true of the Carpathian Basin. Agriculture and food safety are extremely sensitive to climate changes, so adaptability to stress is likely to gain priority over the quantitative aspects of yield. This will demand new approaches both to plant breeding and crop production, and in research strategy.

The Agricultural Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (ARI HAS) is one of the leading centres for crop research and breeding in Central and Eastern Europe, in the Central Transdanubian convergence region, with a profile involving complex, interdependent, basic, methodological and applied research projects culminating in practical applications. The institute maintains close contacts with farmers and processors.

For almost two decades basic and applied research has been underway at ARI HAS in one of the biggest phytotrons in Europe to determine the likely effects of climate change. In acknowledgement of the value of this work, the institute won a grant within the framework of the EU FP7-REGPOT-2007-1 project, aimed at transforming the institute into a regional training and research centre for the whole of Central Europe. The purpose of this centre is to enhance our ability to cope with the consequences of climate change by providing training for agricultural scientists, breeders, innovation experts and farmers from Hungary and abroad.

Within the AGRISAFE project five training courses have been organised over the last two years. In line with the interactive nature of the training sessions, the results and experience gained during the series of courses will be summarised at this Final Conference, where the keynote speakers will be the leading experts in the given field of research. The second day programme (sections 4, 5, 6) will be organised jointly with EUCARPIA. During the three days of the conference, in addition to reviewing the various fields covered in the training sessions, an important part of the agenda will be the elaboration and discussion of a set of guidelines for the crop producers and plant breeders of the future. Together with the lectures and practical manuals written for the training sessions, the complete proceedings of the final conference will be made available not only on the project website, but also on disc and in printed form.

SECTIONS

1. Climate change: facts and fictions

2. Crop production for sustainable agriculture

3. The role of soil in the mitigation of unfavourable effects

4. Gene banks and genetic resources

5. Breeding tools for biotic stress resistance

6. Breeding tools for abiotic stress resistance

7. Interaction between plants and the environment

8. Water overflow and scarcity

Conference information provided by konferenciakalauz.hu

Official Website: http://www.mgki.hu/index.php?conference=26&lang=en