The purpose of the symposium is to review achievements, new developments, trends and challenges in the field of plant mutation breeding and biotechnology, and to foster a broad exchange of information within the scientific community, as well as between the scientific community and the private sector.
The symposium will highlight specific challenges faced by Member States, such as emerging transboundary threats to crop production, and will also assess the overall importance of mutation breeding to food security.
The symposium will focus on new developments in induced mutation, genetics/genomics, molecular biology and biotechnology applied to plant breeding.
The FAO/IAEA International Symposium on Plant Mutation Breeding and Biotechnology will cover the following scientific topics:
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Contribution and impact of mutant varieties on food security
IMV- Socio-economic impact of mutant varieties
- Released mutant varieties and their dissemination and adoption by farmers
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Mutation breeding for adaptation to climate change in seed propagated crops
SPC- Breeding for abiotic stress tolerance
- Breeding for biotic stress resistance
- Breeding for yield and quality improvement in crops
- Advances in in vitro techniques applied in seed propagated crops
- Breeding for enhanced resource use efficiency (land, water, NUE, etc.)
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Enhancing agricultural biodiversity through new mutation induction techniques
MTB- Advances in mutation induction technologies (chemical, physical: ion beam, x-ray, gamma ray etc.)
- Harnessing endogenous DNA elements for inducing mutations
- Enhancing crop genetic diversity through mutation induction (pre-breeding)
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Mutation breeding for ornamental and vegetatively propagated crops
VPC- Breeding in vegetatively propagated crop and trees
- Breeding in ornamental plants
- Advances in in vitro techniques applied in vegetatively propagated plants
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New challenges and technologies in plant genomics and breeding
CGB- High throughput techniques for genotyping and phenotyping
- Mutation discovery and functional genomics
- Genomic and marker assisted selection
- Plant genome editing technologies (emerging trends and new opportunities)
