Colleagues,
On behalf of the organizing committee, it’s my great pleasure to invite your participation in the 2016 Plant and Microbe Adaptation to Cold (PMAC 16) meeting to be held from May 22 to 25, 2016 at the Motif Hotel, located in downtown Seattle, WA USA, just a few blocks from the world famous Pike Place Market and Space Needle. This working group began in 1997 with the First International Workshop on Plant-Microbe Interactions at Low Temperature under Snow in Sapporo, Japan, and has been followed by a series of meetings held around the world (see About PMAC). We are very pleased to be hosting this meeting in the USA for the first time.
From the beginning, this conference has included interdisciplinary research on adaptation of plants to survival under low temperature, including prolonged snow cover, as well as plant-microbe interactions especially as they relate to snow mold diseases. The scope of PMAC 16 will continue the tradition of interdisciplinary interaction, with the ultimate goal of information exchange to develop a better understanding of the factors influencing winter survival of plants and providing a forum for the community of scientists working on these issues. Plenary talks will focus on what’s new with climate change since we last met in 2012, the knowledge gaps and the information we need to address the problems of winter survival and take advantage of the conditions that have become the “new normal” under a changing climate.
Please be sure to mark your calendars for May 22-25, 2016 and attend what will be an exciting meeting in a beautiful city.
Juliet Marshall
Dan Skinner
Local Program Committee
Theme
Ultimately, we strive to improve global food security and agricultural sustainability, which will be impacted by climate change. Consequently, the theme of PMAC 16 will focus on how to take advantage of predicted climate change to improve agriculture for a warmer planet and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns. As this is a broad topic, we encourage interdisciplinary participation including crop breeding, ecology, meteorology, microbiology, molecular biology, plant pathology, plant physiology, soil science and others.
On behalf of the Organizing Committee, we welcome your input on the program and look forward to seeing you in Seattle in 2016.
