Attendance at IGGP, GBG and PGRS Meetings, USA 2010

Abstract

The main objectives of this trip to Portland were to attended conference lecture and poster sessions to update our knowledge on recent developments in the field of plant growth regulation and the development of new products in this area by the international agrichemical companies.

Summary

The main objectives of this trip to Portland were successfully achieved i.e.

• The sessions on the latest work on the perception and signalling of abscisic acid and brassinosteroids were of particular use and interest given their likely involvement in the control of grape berry ripening. Some of the work regarding the receptors for these PGRs was novel and may have implications for how we understand berry ripening in particular.
• There was also an update on the role of calcium and its role in signalling in the plant hormone response which was useful in regard to our work. This provided an introduction to this topic which we haven’t addressed in grapes yet but which is of importance in the signalling pathways controlling grape development.
• Of particular specific interest was an out of print handbook on plant hormone bioassays which would be extremely useful to our current work in isolating and understanding the effect of plant growth regulators on berry development. The society will provide a gratis copy if one can be found but we will also search for a second hand copy as this would be an extremely useful resource for us.
• There were talks on other PGRs in a range of plants, these talks were also useful in providing ideas for new approaches and information regarding other PGRs and combinations of PGRs that might be useful in grapevine.
• There were also a number of talks by people from the agrichemical companies describing what PGRS are available and what developments are in hand. These have provided us with some new potentially useful reagents for manipulating ripening.