The XIIIth International Cereal Rusts and Powdery Mildews Conference is held in Beijing on 28 August – 1 September, 2012, addressing the theme of disease risk and food security faced by humans in the changing world—the climate, the environment, and the pathogens, esp. the threatening stem rust new race Ug99. The Organizing Committee received more than 160 abstracts from 29 countries and organizations. The content of the contributions involves research achievements obtained in disease epidemiology, the pathogen population genetics and diversity, the genomics of the pathogens and the interaction between the hosts and the pathogens, the host resistance and the breeding, the largest contribution, and the integrated control strategies against the diseases. We do hope that the Conference provides the platform for the exchange of ideas and each scientific contribution becomes the focus of fruitful discussions, the opportunity for creating new collaborations and the basis for the accumulation of our collective knowledge of cereal rusts and powdery mildews. The readers can share the information provided by our excellent participants with common interests in the related disciplines from the Proceedings.
The Proceedings is compiled such that the contributions are categorized into 5 sessions. The full papers from the invited speakers and selected presentations will be published in Journal of Integrative Agriculture later.
The Conference was made possible through the collaboration and encouragement of many colleagues and sponsorship of many institutions that have shared our enthusiasm for this Conference. The Organizing Committee is grateful to their support. The success of this Conference, however, will be made possible by the participants of this Conference. We sincerely wish that everyone will get the best of the Conference.
Prof. Wan-Quan Chen
Director of Scientific Committee of 13th ICRPMC and
Deputy Director General of IPP, CAAS
