Electronic Forum on Biotechnology in Food and Agriculture: Conference 14 - Coping with water scarcity in developing countries: What role for agricultural biotechnologies?

The moderated e-mail conference runs from 5 March to 1 April 2007 and is organised by the FAO Biotechnology Forum in collaboration with colleagues in FAO's water programme to coincide with the World Water Day, which is celebrated each year on 22 March. To join the Forum (and also register for the conference), send an e-mail to mailserv@mailserv.fao.org leaving the subject blank and entering only the following text on two separate lines: subscribe BIOTECH-L subscribe biotech-room2 Forum members wishing to register for the conference should leave out the first line of the above message. For more information, contact biotech-mod2@fao.org .

This year its theme is "Coping with water scarcity' and FAO is the coordinating agency within the UN system for the theme. The conference theme also complements those of two recent meetings supported by FAO, i.e. "The 2nd international conference on integrated approaches to sustain and improve plant production under drought stress" (InterDrought-II) and the workshop on "Improving water use efficiency in Mediterranean agriculture: What limits the adoption of new technologies?".

For people who are not familiar with the Forum, it was launched by FAO in March 2000 with the goal of providing access to quality balanced information and to make a neutral platform available for all interested stakeholders to openly exchange views and experiences on agricultural biotechnology in developing countries. It covers applications in the crop, forestry, livestock, fisheries and agro-industry sectors. It has hosted 13 moderated e-mail conferences so far, and in these the e-mail messages have come roughly 50:50 from participants living in developing and developed countries respectively (FAO, 2001, 2006a).