Invited speaker @ Food Security 2012

Food Security: Science, Sustainability and Governance, to be held on 27-28 September 2012 will address the challenges facing food security and will bring together business, industry, government, and academics to discuss practical solutions for local and global concerns.

http://www.informa.com.au/conferences/food-conference/food-security-science-sustainability-and-governance

Salt tolerant wheat - Nature Biotechnology

Our paper on improving the salt tolerance of wheat was published by Nature Biotechnology in March. It is the first study to show a considerable improvement in the salinity tolerance of a cereal crop in the field through the manipulation of a particular gene - we demonstrated a 25% increase in grain yield compared to the parental variety. The work was the result of a strong collaboration with our colleagues at CSIRO Plant Industry in Canberra, Rana Munns and Richard James, and other research agencies including the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics. 

The paper has since received considerable interest from around the world, both from the scientific community and the media.

For a lay summary of the work see our Scientific American article.

A few of the media stories and links to audio see below.

Austrade
BBC World Service (after 8m20s)

ABC Radio Bush Telegraph
ABC Radio AM
ABC Radio National
The Australian
The Times of India
New Scientist

Also an interesting report that includes the view of the farmer involved in the study.

Reportage

 

Invited talk @ 4th Grapevine Research Co-ordination Network Meeting

Matt Gilliham will give an invited talk at the 4th Annual Grapevine Research Co-ordination meeting on rootstock genomics. The meeting will be held in Corvallis Oregon in July 2012. See here for the meeting website.

Invited talk @ ASPB in US

Matt Gilliham will give an invited talk at the ASPB meeting in Houston Texas on the 21st July in the Metal Stress symposium on the role of HKT in salinity tolerance in wheat. http://my.aspb.org/?page=Meeting_MiniSymposia

PCP Lab @ the Gordon Conference on Salt Stress

Sam Henderson (PhD Student) working on salinity tolerance in grapevines and Steve Tyerman (COE CI), on root to shoot hydraulic signalling, will present their work at the Gordon Conference in Hong Kong at the end of June. Our collaborator Rana Munns from CSIRO PI will also present a talk, which will include our work on improving the salt tolerance of wheat.