CONFERENCE: 8th International Symposium on Nitrogen Fixation with Non-Legumes, 3-7 December 2000, Sydney, Australia: Travel Funds

University Of Arizona, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

The 8th International Symposium on Nitrogen Fixation with Non-Legumes will bring scientists throughout the world to Sydney, Australia, for five days of discussion about the potential to use nitrogen fixing bacteria for supplying the essential element, nitrogen, to non-leguminous plants. While the legume plants such as peas and beans are known to gain significant amounts of N from association with nitrogen-fixing bacteria called Rhizobia, much less is known about symbiotic nitrogen fixation in different families of plants. Recent developments have now made it more likely that the some nitrogen-fixing bacteria might play a role in making the growth of grass species (and cereal production) less dependent on chemical fertilizer which is expensive and a major pollutant of agricultural run-off water. These bacteria are called endophytes because they live inside (endo) plants (phyte), not in a differentiated structure like legume root nodues but within the intercellular spaces and vascular system of their plant host. Scientists in the USA, Brazil, Australia, Argentina, Germany, Israel, India, and The Phillipines are studying different aspects of endophytes. Also to be reviewed and discussed is the idea of transferring nitrogen fixation genes from bacteria into plants such that plants could themselves fix nitrogen one day, by-passing the need for bacterial symbionts or endophytes. Recent work from the UK on the transfer of a few nitrogen fixation genes (from among the 22 or so needed) into a primitive plant called Chlamydomonas represents a step in this direction. At the conclusion of the Symposium, a summing up of the state of the art will be disseminated to the public as well as to the scientific community. The grant from the National Science Foundation will support the travel of 8 USA scientists to Sydney. All of them are invited plenary or session speakers or are young scientists (post-docs) for whom attending a symposium such as this will help advance their careers.