As you may already know, 2010 has been declared as the International Year of Biodiversity by the United Nations. As part of the activities planned for the year, Bioversity International (Rome, Italy), the IPK (Gatersleben, Germany) and the University of Bologna (Bologna, Italy) will organize the 2nd International Symposium on “Genomics of Plant Genetic Resources” (GPGR2) to be held in Bologna, from April 24 to 27, 2010. This 2nd edition of the symposium series follows the 1st edition that was organized by Dr. Jia Jizeng at CAAS, Beijing, China, from April 25 to 27, 2005.

We cordially invite you and your colleagues to attend this symposium.


Registration is now open and details are available at the congress website.The website also reports the details of the lectures of the invited speakers, including Prof. Gebisa Ejeta, the 2009 World Food Prize Laureate, and 40 acclaimed scientists. A round table discussion will address the key topic of “Educating a new generation of plant breeders”. The abstract deadline has been set for February 15, 2010. A number of abstracts will be chosen for oral presentations. The peer-reviewed journal Plant Genetic Resources will publish a special issue collecting short manuscripts of the work presented during the Congress (oral and poster presentations). Further details are available on the congress website.