[For further information on the Electronic Forum on Biotechnology in Food and Agriculture see the Forum website.
Note, participants are assumed to be speaking on their own behalf, unless they state otherwise.]

-----Original Message-----
From: Biotech-Mod2
Sent: 02 March 2007 13:53
To: 'biotech-room2@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Opening of FAO e-mail conference on water scarcity and biotechnology

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the FAO e-mail conference entitled "Coping with water scarcity in developing countries: What role for agricultural biotechnologies?".

You can send messages now (send them to biotech-room2@mailserv.fao.org). Messages will be posted from Monday 5 March onwards while the last day for receiving messages for posting will be Sunday 1 April 2007.

We hope that the conference will be interesting, constructive and beneficial and we encourage you to participate actively. We would like to briefly remind you of some of the main points about the running of the conference:

i) Participants should introduce themselves briefly in their first posting to the conference. They should also provide their full address at the end of the message. When a message is posted, we will replace @ in the e-mail address with (at) because of spamming.

ii) Messages should not exceed 600 words

iii) People posting messages are assumed to be speaking on their own behalf and not on behalf of their employers (unless they indicate otherwise)

iv) The Background Document to the conference, sent by e-mail to the Forum members on 5 February, sets the scene for the conference and so we strongly encourage you to read it, especially Section 6 (reproduced below) which lists the kinds of specific questions that participants should address in the e-mail conference. The document is available at http://www.fao.org/biotech/C14doc.htm. Contact me if you want to receive it within an e-mail or as a WORD attachment.

v) Messages posted in the conference will later (usually within a day or two) be placed on the Forum website - at http://www.fao.org/biotech/logs/c14logs.htm

vi) No messages will be posted with attachments. If you receive a message during the conference with an e-mail attachment, just delete it without opening the attachment.

vii) The conference covers the crop, forestry, livestock and fishery sectors and brings together people who may have knowledge/experience from one or more but not all of these sectors. As terminology is occasionally sector-specific, we ask participants to try and give a brief explanation of any sector-specific terms when they are first used.

viii) As for all other conferences hosted by this Forum, when it is finished a document will be prepared to provide a summary of the main arguments and issues discussed during the e-mail conference, based on the messages posted by the participants. The summary document will be put on the Forum website and disseminated as widely as possible.

For those of you who joined the FAO Biotechnology Forum recently, we can tell you that this is the 14th e-mail conference that it has hosted since it began in 2000. All publications, background and summary documents, e-mail messages etc. related to these conferences are available at the Forum website - http://www.fao.org/biotech/forum.asp

Finally, we encourage you to tell any potentially interested colleagues or contacts about this conference. A short notice is included below for this purpose.

With our sincere best wishes for a successful conference,

John

John Ruane, PhD
Moderator, Conference 14
e-mail: mailto:biotech-mod2@fao.org
FAO Biotechnology Forum website http://www.fao.org/biotech/forum.asp
FAO Biotechnology website http://www.fao.org/biotech/index.asp

The FAO Biotechnology Forum is hosting an e-mail conference entitled "Coping with water scarcity in developing countries: What role for agricultural biotechnologies?". Organised in collaboration with colleagues in FAO's water programme (http://www.fao.org/ag/agl/aglw/), it is one of the many activities planned to coincide with the World Water Day, which is celebrated each year on 22 March. This year its theme is "Coping with water scarcity" and FAO is the coordinating agency within the UN system for the theme. The primary focus of the conference will be on the use of biotechnology to increase the efficiency of water use in agriculture, while a secondary focus will be on two specific water-related applications of micro-organisms, in wastewater treatment and in inoculation of crops and forest trees with mycorrhizal fungi. To discuss and exchange experiences on this subject, we invite you to join the conference. The background document for the conference is available at http://www.fao.org/biotech/C14doc.htm. The conference is open to everyone, is free and will be moderated. It begins on 5 March and finishes on 1 April 2007. All e-mail messages posted during the conference will also be placed on the Forum website (http://www.fao.org/biotech/forum.asp). 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 the following text on two lines:
subscribe BIOTECH-L
subscribe biotech-room2

Those who are already Forum members should leave out the first line of the above message, to register for the conference. For more information, contact biotech-mod2@fao.org

As with each conference hosted by this FAO Biotechnology Forum, the focus is on application of agricultural biotechnology in developing countries. In this debate on the role of biotechnology for helping developing countries to cope with water scarcity, some of the specific questions that participants might wish to address in the e-mail conference are given below:

- A number of major strategies have been briefly described for coping with water scarcity (Section 3). Compared to them, how important is improving the efficiency of water use in crops through biotechnology in developing countries?

- Which biotechnology tools have greatest potential for improving the efficiency of water use in crops in developing countries?

- How important are biotechnology tools compared to conventional breeding for improving the efficiency of water use in crops in developing countries

- Research on water use in crops has focused on a few species of major economic importance while so-called orphan crops, of local or regional importance for nutrition and income in poor regions, have been neglected, despite their importance for food security. How can this situation be changed?

- Water use efficiency has different implications in irrigated and non-irrigated (dryland) agriculture. What can biotechnology offer developing countries in each of the two domains in terms of increasing productivity under water scarcity and improving the efficiency of use of the applied irrigation water?

- For the livestock sector, what role should biotechnology tools play in increasing the efficiency of water use in developing countries?

- For the forestry sector, what role should biotechnology tools play in increasing the efficiency of water use in developing countries?

- For aquaculture, what role should biotechnology tools play in increasing the efficiency of water use in developing countries?

- What role and relevance do biotechnologies currently have in wastewater treatment in developing countries? And in the future?

- Is the rapidly-accumulating molecular information on micro-organisms involved in wastewater treatment processes likely to result in the better design and operation of wastewater plants in developing countries?

- What role do biotechnologies have for the removal of heavy metals, such as arsenic, from irrigation water in developing countries?

- How important is application of mycorrhizal fungi as a biofertiliser in helping developing countries to cope with water scarcity?