The OPTICHINA International Conference Held in Beijing

The OPTICHINA International Conference “Breeding to Optimize Agriculture in a Changing World”, organized by the Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, was held in Beijing, May 26-29, 2014. Forty scientists and researchers from China, Spain, Australia, UK, Germany etc.delivered presentations on defining and protecting yield potential from traits and genes, high throughput precision phenotyping in the field, molecular technologies in modern breeding, models of ideal ideotype designs, data analysis, management and bioinformatics, and national challenges and opportunities: the case of China, etc. Fourteen OPTICHINA-Fellowship holders presented their work in Young Scientist Forum. About 100 people from all over the world attended this conference. During the general discussion session at the end of the conference, the participants raised critical suggestions and comments on how to improve breeding to optimize agriculture in a changing world, which will lay a solid foundation for our future collaboration. After the conference, participants visited the National Genebank and the Changping Experimental Station.

According to Prof. Jiankang Wang, who is the executive chairman of this conference, Breeding to Optimize Chinese Agriculture(OPTICHINA) is a three-year project jointly supported by Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and European Union in June 2011. There are seven parties participating in this project. They are Barcelona University, Lleida University, Rothamsted Research Centre, John Innes Centre, Max-Planck Research Centre, Institute of Crop Science of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and National Maize Improvement Centre in China Agricultural University. The first workshop “China-EU New Technology and Methodology in Plant Molecular Breeding”, organized by Institute of Crop Science and Bureau of International Co-operation Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and National Maize Improvement Centre in China Agricultural University, was held in Beijing on June 20-22,2011. The second workshop was held in Barcelona University on September 17-20,2012. This project has supported30 young Chinese scientists and graduate students to have 3-6 month academic visits to EU institutions or universities.