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Moderated conference on Genomics in Food and Agriculture

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Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to this FAO e-mail conference on "Impacts of genomics and other 'omics' for the crop, forestry, livestock, fishery and agro-industry sectors in developing countries" !! Thank you for joining.

You can send messages now (send them to [log in to unmask]). Messages will be posted from Monday 4 March onwards while the last day for receiving messages will be Sunday 24 March 2013.

We hope that the conference will be interesting, constructive and beneficial and we encourage you to participate actively. On joining the conference, you received a Welcome Text which also contains the Guidelines for Sending Messages. Here, we would like to briefly remind you of some of the main points about the running of the conference:

1. When sending their first message to the conference, participants should introduce themselves briefly (2-3 sentences) at the top of the message. They should also provide their full work address at the end of the message. When a message is posted, we will replace @ in the e-mail address with (at) to avoid spamming.

2. Messages should not exceed 600 words

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

4. 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.

5. Messages posted in the conference will also be made available on the web, at 
https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?A0=Biotech-Room3-L

6. The Background Document to the conference, sent by e-mail to subscribers of this conference on 28 February, sets the scene for the conference. We strongly encourage you to read it, especially Section 4 (reproduced below) which provides specific guidance about the two main questions that participants should address in the conference. The document is available at http://www.fao.org/docrep/017/aq145e/aq145e.pdf (90 KB). Contact me (at [log in to unmask]) if you want to receive the document by e-mail.

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,
E-conference on Genomics in Food and Agriculture,
FAO Working Group on Biotechnology,
E-mail address: [log in to unmask]
FAO Biotechnology Forum: http://www.fao.org/biotech/biotech-forum/
FAO Biotechnology website: http://www.fao.org/biotech/ (in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Russian)

*****************
Genomics in Food and Agriculture - FAO e-mail conference

From 4 to 24 March 2013 the FAO Biotechnology Forum is hosting its next e-mail conference on "Impacts of genomics and other 'omics' for the crop, forestry, livestock, fishery and agro-industry sectors in developing countries". Advances in genomics, the study of all the genetic material (i.e. the genome) of an organism, have been remarkable in recent years. Publication of the first draft of the human genome in 2001 was a milestone, quickly followed by that of the first crop (rice) in 2002 and the first farm animal (chicken) in 2004. Huge technological advancements have meant that sequencing has become dramatically quicker and cheaper over time, so the genomes of many of the important crops, livestock, forest trees, aquatic animals and agricultural pests are now already sequenced or soon will be. This e-mail conference will look at the impacts that genomics, and the other related 'omics', have had so far on food and agriculture in developing countries as well as their potential impacts in the near future.

To join, send an e-mail to [log in to unmask] with the following one line in the body of the message (leave the subject line blank): 
subscribe biotech-room3-L firstname lastname

The background document to the conference is available from the Forum website, at http://www.fao.org/biotech/biotech-forum/en/. For more information, contact [log in to unmask]
********************

[FROM THE BACKGROUND DOCUMENT - http://www.fao.org/docrep/017/aq145e/aq145e.pdf]

4. Topics to be discussed in this e-mail conference

This is the 19th e-mail conference to be hosted by the FAO Biotechnology Forum (http://www.fao.org/biotech/biotech-forum/en/) since it was launched in the year 2000. As with each conference hosted by the Forum, the focus is on applications in developing countries. 

As seen in Section 2, the first sequenced genomes of domesticated animals and plants were released about 10 years ago and an ever increasing number of important species have been sequenced each year since then. Also, the genomes of several thousand micro-organisms have now been sequenced. As seen in Section 3, the knowledge generated from genomics can be applied in several different ways. In this context, the first main question to be addressed in the conference is:

4.1 What have been the impacts (positive and/or negative) so far of genomics and the other 'omics' for the crop, forestry, livestock, fishery and agro-industry sectors in developing countries?

In addressing this question, the specific kinds of issues that participants might wish to discuss are:

- How exactly was the knowledge derived from genomics and the other 'omics' used?
- What kind of impacts did they have?
- Were the impacts the same in different sectors? If not, why not?
- Were the impacts the same in different developing world regions? If not, why not?
- What products, if any, were derived from the knowledge? If products were developed, how were intellectual property rights issues dealt with (an issue discussed in the second genomics-related session at ABDC-10 (FAO, 2011b))?
- Which specific issues enabled genomics and the other 'omics' to have positive impacts (e.g. government policies, international collaboration, public-private partnerships, complementary infrastructure, germplasm distribution networks)?
- Which specific issues prevented them from having positive impacts (e.g. costs, intellectual property rights, the species sequenced)?
- Were the impacts influenced by the sequencing strategy (e.g. generating genome sequence data in-house in developing countries versus outsourcing this work)?
- The relative importance of genomics versus transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics or other 'omics'

While the first main question looks at the past and the present, the second main question looks to the near future:
 
4.2 What are the impacts (positive and/or negative) of genomics and other 'omics' likely to be in the near future (e.g. the next five years) for the crop, forestry, livestock, fishery and agro-industry sectors in developing countries?
In addressing this question, the kind of issues that participants might wish to discuss might be: 
- Whether the magnitude of their impacts is likely to be big or small, and why?
- In which food and agricultural sectors are the impacts likely to be largest?
- In which developing world regions are the impacts likely to be largest?
- What can be changed so that genomics and the other 'omics' can have positive impacts on food security and sustainable development in developing countries in the near future?
- The relative importance of genomics versus transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics or other 'omics' in the near future

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