Salt and Water Stress in Plants

The meeting will address recent advances in understanding water and salt stress resistance and highlight insights emerging from cell biology and biochemistry, genomics and ecophysiology. Talks will consider a diversity of mechanisms – from the molecular to organismic level – that influence cellular activities, developmental programs and whole-plant physiology. Emphasis will be placed on mechanistic information gained from model and non-model systems that can be translated to crop improvement. Topics will include new progress in understanding stress signaling, gene and response regulatory systems, ion and water homeostasis, photosynthesis, as well as developmental plasticity. Leveraging climate change models and the challenges of ensuring the stress resilience of agricultural crops will also be addressed. The importance of this GRC topic for food global security is reflected in the draw of speakers and participants from all over the globe.