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11th International Fusarium Workshop, Hangzhou, China 20th – 24th August 2013.
The 11th International Fusarium Workshop was held in Hangzhou, China. This workshop was held as a satellite meeting of the 10th International Congress of Plant Pathology. The 11th IFW was very well organised by the ISPP Fusarium committee and the local organiser Zhonghua Ma and members of his laboratory at Zhejiang University. The attendance of international researchers at IFW was limited due to overlap with other plant pathology meetings around the world; there were however attendees representing England, Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, South Africa, Egypt, Taiwan, Australia, Japan, USA and China. The lectures were dominated by pathogenomic studies of especially Fusarium graminearum.
Topics such as species identification, breeding, resistance and management of Fusarium infection in a wide variety of hosts such as strawberries, cucumber, tomatoes, banana and cereals were also presented providing an interesting scientific programme. At the conference dinner the Chinese organisers treated us with Chinese specialities including ducks tongue, pickled lotus stuffed with rice and a very nice rice-wheat wine that tasted delicious but was very hazardous to several people’s health. To me the 11th IFW was a great opportunity for creating new contacts and nurturing old ones.
Linda Nielsen University of Nottingham.
