Background

This is the Fifth International Rice Genetics Symposium in the series of symposia held by IRRI every five years. The symposium will be held in Manila from 19-23 November 2005. The first international symposium held in 1985 led to the birth of the Rice Genetics Cooperative (RGC) for promoting international collaboration. The same year, the Rockefeller Foundation established the International Program on Rice Biotechnology, which has played a major role in advancing the frontiers of knowledge on cellular and molecular genetics of rice, international collaboration, and human resource development. In the second symposium, a unified system of numbering rice chromosomes and linkage groups was adopted. The orientation of classical and molecular maps was one of the many highlights of the third symposium. The fourth symposium brought together 520 rice scientists from 32 countries and provided an excellent forum for scientists from developed and developing countries to share information on the latest advances in rice science and to develop collaborative research projects.

From being a poor cousin to maize, wheat and tomato for genetic knowledge, as recently as the 1980s, rice has become a model plant for molecular genetic research. Numerous scientists in laboratories worldwide have helped make rice a favored higher plant for molecular and cellular genetic studies. Notable examples include genome sequencing of both indica and japonica rice and isolation and characterization of genes governing various agronomic traits. These advances have opened new avenues for gene discovery and to apply new tools of genomics to understand the function of rice genes. Manipulation of such genes would be another break-through in rice genetics and breeding and to develop nutritional rice varieties with higher yield potential, possessing durable resistance to pests and increased tolerance to abiotic stresses.

The Fifth International Rice Genetics Symposium will feature plenary lectures, oral and poster presentations and workshops. It will be held jointly with the Third International Rice Functional Genomics Symposium, an annual event. World famous geneticists will deliver plenary lectures covering a wide range of topics from classical genetics to the most advanced research on gene isolation and functional genomics. The symposium will provide an important forum for reviewing the latest advances in rice research and for in-depth discussion and exchange of information on classical genetics and genomics. Topics covered in the symposium include:

• Analysis of the rice genome sequence
• Gene mapping: agronomic traits and heterosis
• Gene mapping: disease and insect resistance
• Gene mapping: abiotic stresses
• Genetic diversity & evolution, and genome organization
• Gene identification and function
• Gene expression
• Analysis of rice mutants
• Transgenics for rice improvement
• Organelle genomes
• Comparative genomics
• Use of molecular markers in breeding
• Genetic/genomic databases
• Allele mining
• SNPs and novel molecular marker