The FAO moderated e-mail conference entitled "Coping with water scarcity in developing countries: What role for agricultural biotechnologies?" is now finished. It ran from 5 March to 1 April 2007, about 430 people subscribed and 78 messages were posted by 50 people in 24 different countries. About two thirds of the messages came from developing countries. Topics discussed included the development of drought tolerant crops, through marker-assisted selection or conventional breeding; genetic modification and alternatives to genetic modification in solving water scarcity; use of bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi inoculants; and the use of biotechnologies for treating wastewater to be used in agriculture. The messages are available at http://www.fao.org/biotech/logs/c14logs.htm or can be requested as a single e-mail (size 128 KB) from [email protected].

12/04/2007