Venue: Discovery centre, CSIRO, Canberra, Australia

Dates: 21 - 24 April 2009


This three-day Symposium will bring together leading researchers from Australia, Europe and North America and will span screening techniques and analytic approaches for assessing biotic and abiotic stress, growth and yield and ecosystem dynamics and climate change.

It will also provide an opportunity for researchers to explore ideas for future innovations and collaborations to address the global issues of food security, appropriate biofuel feedstocks and climate change adaptation.

Advances in phenomics - the study of how the genetic makeup of an organism determines its appearance, function and performance - promise a powerful set of tools for plant biologists and plant breeders.

The Symposium will be hosted by Australian Plant Phenomics Facility. This facility, established in 2008, is developing innovative methods for automated image analysis of the phenotypic characteristics of extensive germplasm collections and large breeding, mapping and mutant populations. The facility, with nodes in Canberra and Adelaide, will exploit recent advances in robotics, imaging and computing to enable sensitive, high throughput analyses to be made of plant growth and function. The APPF has been developed with the support of the Australian government; it is accessible to researchers, plant breeders and students. The facility will expand research networks both nationally and internationally, bringing together basic science and application to agriculture.

View the Programme