Dear colleagues,

On behalf of the Organizing Committee, it is a pleasure to invite you to the FEBS Workshop Resurrection plants: Hope for crop drought tolerance (ReHOPE). Drought affects more people than any other natural disaster. It has been estimated that half of the world population will live in areas of high water scarcity by 2020 that will likely pose an increasingly dramatic problem of food shortage. The FEBS Workshop “Resurrection plants: Hope for crop drought tolerance” (ReHOPE) devotes to a unique group of flora that can survive extreme water shortages for years - resurrection plants, comprising more than 130 known varieties in the world. The workshop will create an extraordinary platform where participants will develop a comprehensive understanding of resurrection plant system biology and then put forward management strategies to overcome the drought stress. The event invites established and up-and-coming researchers to share exciting new findings in ‘omics’ technologies which make possible in-depth understanding of the vegetative desiccation response of resurrection plants. It provides the ideal setting for exchanging ideas, conceptual advances and the promotion of collaborations for building a bridge to bioengineering of drought-tolerant crops. The three-day workshop will provide a stimulating program featuring a diverse range of topics, including biodiversity and environment interaction of resurrection plants, physiological, biochemical and molecular mechanisms of drought tolerance, genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics of resurrection plants, genomics-assisted breeding and bioengineering of drought-tolerant crops. The planned meeting will be a good occasion for young scientists to discuss, brainstorm, get inspiration and form research co-operations with the lead scientists in these respective fields. Young Travel Fellowships will also be available upon application/selection procedure. We are looking forward to welcome you in Plovdiv for an exciting and memorable scientific meeting.

Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnologiies (IMBB), Bulgaria and Faculty of Biology, University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria

Organizer

Main Sponsor