Progress 09/01/23 to 04/19/24

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience of this project included US graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and faculty that research and study rice biology and that participated in the 20th International Symposium on Rice Functional Genomics (ISRFG2023). This project provided support to several US researchers, primarily early-career scientists (students, postdoctoral scholars, and junior faculty), that tend to lack financial resources to attend major conferences. The project enabled two graduate students and one assistant professor, as well as three additional scientists, most of whom also presented talks, to participate in the conference by providing travel awards. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project enabled the participation in ISRFG2023 of three early-career US rice biologists to share their cutting-edge research and to engage in vital networking and career development. The early career awardees had opportunities to establish and strengthen their professional relationships with later career scientists and peer networks. They also engaged in several professional development activities including workshops focused on molecular breeding tools and the application of gene-editing in rice research. The project's PI participated as a judge for the early career competitions: two 'best young scientist' awards for early career scholars selected to give oral presentations, and two 'best poster' awards. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?As described in the accomplishments section, the project's PI was an invited panelist in the conference discussion on assessing priorities for future improvement in rice research. Their outputs were communicated in a conference report that was submitted by conference organizers to various funding agencies in India. In addition, the conference abstract book is shared publicly online (https://www.isrfg2023.org/FinalISRFG2023_Abstract.pdf) What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Rice is clearly an essential crop for much of the world; however, while the US accounts for less than 2 percent of global rice production, it ships almost 5 percent of global exports and is currently the fifth-largest exporter. Exports are thus important to the U.S. rice industry, with around 45 percent of the crop currently exported each year. The ISRFG conference gathered global leaders of the rice research field to disseminate new information and techniques, coordinate on-going research, and, most importantly, help shape the careers of early career plant scientists. The project facilitated changes in knowledge which we believe will underpin changes in action in future rice biological research approaches and collaborations. The project enabled the participation in ISRFG2023 of three early-career and three later-career US rice biologists to share their cutting-edge research. Two of the later career biologists were invited to present their research in platform talks. The participation of these scientists contributed to promoting advances in rice research made in the US research community, provided an opportunity for participants to learn about the latest developments in structural, functional and evolutionary genomics and genetics research, and facilitated international collaborations in rice research. In addition, the project contributed to change in knowledge via the discussion panel on the final day of the conference, including the project's PI, to discuss issues related to climate resilience, resource use efficiency, and grain quality. The focus was on increasing grain quality as a primary goal, and a main consensus of the panelists was the need to encourage and foster data sharing among global rice rearchers in order to reduce duplication of research and accelerate crop improvement. To achieve this the panelists stressed the need for sharing materials and technologies such as genome edited lines, mutants, wild relatives, and breeding lines. Additional emergent priorities were to leverage new trait potential in wild rice species and accessions, and to collaborate beyond traditional researchers and engage social scientists, economists and those that perform outreach to non-scientific communities. The panel was chaired by Dr. Trilochan Mohapatra, the former Director General of the Indian Council for Agriculture Research and the current chair of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Authority (PPV&FRA),. Panelists, other than the project's PI, included Dr. Rod A Wing, Dr. Akhilesh K Tyagi, Dr. Martin Kater, and Dr. Usha Vijayaraghavan. The panel discussion was moderated by Dr. M S Sheshshayee.

Publications