CONFERENCE: THE BIOLOGY OF TRANSPIRATION: FROM GUARD CELLS TO GLOBE

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: COMPLETE
• Funding Source: NRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 0207760
• Grant No.: 2006-35100-17347
• Proposal No.: 2006-02141
• Project Start Date: Aug 15, 2006
• Project End Date: Aug 14, 2007
• Grant Year: 2006
• Program Code: [22.1]- (N/A)

Recipient Organization
UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
LOGAN,UT 84322

Performing Department
BIOLOGY

Non Technical Summary
The subject of plant water loss by transpiration covers a wide range of scales and involves scientists from several fields. Typically, these scientists do not attend the same professional meetings and have little opportunity to interact. The purpose of this conference is to bring together at a single meeting a group of scientists working on various aspects of plant transpiration. The meeting will be organized to foster discussion and collaboration among workers who would not normally interact.

Animal Health Component

(N/A)

Research Effort Categories

Basic

100%

Applied

(N/A)

Developmental

(N/A)

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
903	0210	1060	33%
903	0499	1060	33%
903	2499	1060	34%

Knowledge Area
903 - Communication, Education, and Information Delivery;

Subject Of Investigation
0210 - Water resources; 0499 - Atmosphere, general/other; 2499 - Plant research, general;

Field Of Science
1060 - Biology (whole systems);

Keywords

transpiration

stomata

xylem

water

plants

roots

global change ;

Goals / Objectives
The goal of the conference is to provide an opportunity for the exchange of information and ideas between scientists in related disciplines who are interested in transpiration. No one factor is more important to the improvement of global crop and forestry yields than improved drought tolerance and therefore efficiency of water use. To progress beyond empirical selection for germplasm with improved water use efficiency and to make use of the rapidly expanding array of genomic resources, an integration of skills and insights of scientists studying transpiration from different disciplines is needed. Disciplines range from molecular biology and biochemistry to whole plant/environmental physiology and microclimatology. Simultaneously plant responses to global change, particularly evapotranspiration, is a major unknown affecting accurate prediction of the world's future climate. Improvement here also requires a similar integration. Current professional society and discipline boundaries militate against these groups interacting. This meeting will cross these boundaries bringing these groups together in a discussion format designed to inform and catalyze the formation of integrated research questions, and collaborative groups. This is needed to address the major challenges of adapting to increased drought and a better understanding of global change impacts from a molecular base. At the same time it will show younger scientists the opportunities to address overarching questions from an interdisciplinary approach.

Project Methods
Planned sessions will cover the topic at scales ranging from the molecule through the whole plant and ecosystem to the globe. The invited speakers take different research approaches, have diverse disciplinary perspectives but have all made major advances within their own disciplines. The results of this meeting cannot be achieved within the structure of regular meetings of professional societies because these meetings cover only portions of this topic, and because the individuals involved typically attend different meetings. For example, the ASPB Annual Meeting typically has a fairly minor representation of whole plant water relations, which is better represented at the Ecology Society of America (ESA) and Crop Science Society of America (CSSA) Annual Meetings. ASPB has even less representation of ecophysiology (also covered by ESA) and global/earth systems biology which is best represented at the American Geophysical Union's (AGU) Annual Meeting. The annual International Meeting of Arabidopsis Research typically covers the field of transpiration only with a few posters each year on molecular aspects such guard cell development and the genetics of guard cell signaling. Our meeting should strengthen the rapprochement that is only beginning to develop between the research community exploiting model plant systems such as Arabidopsis and corn, and the communities of biochemists, biophysicists, crop scientists, whole plant and environmental physiologists, and global/earth systems biologists.

Progress 08/15/06 to 08/14/07

Outputs
OUTPUTS: This grant was used to partially fund a conference entitled "The Biology of Transpiration: from Guard Cells to Globe, which was held at Snowbird, UT, Oct 10 through 14. A detailed timetable for the conference is given below. Wednesday 11 October 8:20 am - Organizers Welcome and Charge to Participants SIGNALING 8:30 am Alistair Hetherington (Lancaster University, UK) 9:05 am Ken-ichiro Shimazaki (Kyushu University, Japan) 9:40 am Reka Albert (Pennsylvania State University, USA) STOMATA AND THE ATMOSPHERE 10:40 am Russ Monson (Colorado State University, USA) 11:15 am Joseph Berry (Carnegie Institution, USA) 11:50 am Maggie Caird (University of California, Davis, USA) CO-ORDINATION WITHIN THE PLANT 3:30 pm John Sperry (University of Utah, USA) 4:05 pm Bill Davies (Lancaster University, UK) 4:30 pm Rick Meinzer (USDA Forest Service, USA) 5:00 p.m Francois Chaumont (Universite catholique de Louvain, Belgium) 7:30 pm Workshop I: Techniques for measuring ecosystem level gas exchange (Campbell Scientific) 8:45 - 10:45 pm Poster Session Thursday 11th October REGULATION OF TRANSPIRATION 8:30 am Christophe Maurel (INRA/CNRS, France) 9:05 am Josette Masle (Australian National University, Australia) 9:40 am Thomas Juenger (University of Texas at Austin, USA) GUARD CELL ION FLUXES 10:40 am Rainer Hedrich (University of Wurzburg, Germany) 11:15 am Michael Blatt (University of Glasgow, UK) Getting 11:50 am Sally Assmann (The Pennsylvania State University) STOMATA AND THE ATMOSPHERE 3:30 pm Carl Bernacchi (ISWS/University of Illinois, USA) 4:05 pm David Fowler (Center for Ecology and Hydrology, UK) 5:00 pm Triin Kollist (University of Helsinki, Finland) abi1 7:30 pm Workshop II: 8:45 - 10:45 pm Poster Session Friday 12th October APPROACHES TO MONITORING AND UNDERSTANDING STOMATAL BEHAVIOR 8:30 am Susanne von Caemmerer (ANU, Australia) 9:05 am Hamlynn Jones (University of Dundee, UK) Remote 9:40 am Julie Gray (University of Sheffield, UK) 10:10 am Sylvain Merlot (CNRS - ISV, France) TRANSPIRATION AND PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE COMMUNITIES. 11:10 am Ian Woodward (Sheffield University, UK) Vegetation 11:45 am Jenny McElwain (University College, Dublin, Ireland) GUARD CELL DEVELOPMENT 3:30 pm Dominique Bergmann (Carnegie Institution, USA) 4:05 pm Fred Sack (Ohio State University, USA) 4:55 pm Gail Taylor (University of Southampton, UK) Saturday 13th October 9:00 am N. Michele Holbrook (Harvard University, USA) Water 9:40 am Julian Schroeder (UCSD, USA) 10:20 am Graham Farquhar (ANU, Australia) 10:50 am Meeting Conclusion (Organizers) PARTICIPANTS: Steve Long, Sally Assmann TARGET AUDIENCES: Scientists interested in Transpiration

Impacts
This was by any measure, a very successful meeting. The ASPB conducted a post-meeting survey, the results of which are attached. Several notable results deserve highlighting. First, 43 respondents rated the overall quality of the talks as 'Excellent' with 17 rating them as 'Very Good'. There was only 1 'Good', and no 'Fair' or 'Poor' ratings. All respondents said they would attend a similar meeting on the same topic in 2 or 4 years. The meeting provided an outstanding opportunity for many young scientists to interact with senior scientists in a small meeting with an intimate atmosphere. The meeting was deliberately held in an 'isolated' venue and meals were taken together to promote interaction. These 'engineered' interactions allowed young scientists to meet with and discuss their work with all participants and gained many positive comments from the participants.

Publications

• No publications reported this period