Register for Microbial Resources for Agricultural and Food Security
05 June 2017
Microbial Resources for Agricultural and Food Security, the first of the Microbiology Society’s 2017 series of Focused Meetings, will take place from 21–23 June 2017 at the Metropolitan Arts Centre in Belfast. The meeting will cover one of the key challenges of the 21st century – how to feed a growing population while maintaining responsible environmental stewardship.
Keynote presentations from Dana Cordell and Brent Jacobs (both University of Technology Sydney, Australia), Richard McDowell (Lincoln University, New Zealand), Phil Haygarth (Lancaster University, UK) and Penny Hirsch (Rothamsted Research, UK) will consider the issues around nutrient sustainability within the agri-food sector, and the contrasting challenges of eutrophication management, dwindling global phosphate reserves and the increasing cost of fertiliser production.
Christian Kabbe (German Nutrient Platform, Germany), Jason Chin (Queen’s University Belfast, UK) and Fabiana Paula (NUI-Galway, Ireland) will in turn discuss current and future technologies for nutrient recovery and recycling from agri-food waste streams.
Within agricultural systems there is an increasing awareness of the need to understand how microbial communities function. Presentations by Lionel Dupuy (The James Hutton Institute, UK), Kari Dunfield (University of Guelph, Canada), Anna Schnürer (University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden) and Tim Lenton (University of Exeter, UK) will describe how their research – on development of transparent soil systems, live imaging, genomics and modelling – can advance our understanding of agricultural microbiomes, and how these can be exploited to improve agricultural productivity and sustainable farm management.
For more information about the conference and speakers, please visit the event’s page. You can take advantage of the early bird rates if you register before 14 June.
Image: Dr_Microbe/Thinkstock.
