Venue: The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Chairs: Julian I. Schroeder & Teun Munnik
Vice Chairs: Michael R. Blatt & Eduardo Blumwald
Hong Kong Co-organizer: Jianhua Zhang

CUHK hosted for the first time a Gordon Research Conferences (GRC) meeting on “Salt and Water Stress in Plants” from 24 to 29 June 2012.

GRC is a world renowned organization that provides an international forum for high level academic exchange in the fields of biological, chemical and physical sciences. It was initiated by Dr. Neil E. Gordon of the Johns Hopkins University in the late 1920s, and organizes almost 200 meetings every year in different cities in the US, Italy and Switzerland.

This meeting was chaired by Prof. Julian I. Schroeder from the University of California at San Diego and Prof. Teun Munnik from the University of Amsterdam. Prof. Zhang Jianhua from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the School of Life Sciences, served as the local Co-organizer of the meeting. The event brought together 150 top-notch scientists from universities, research institutes and industries worldwide, to present and discuss their latest research accomplishments on identifying individual biological mechanisms, genes and networks that plants require in order to survive under abiotic stress. The main focus of the meeting was to formulate long-term strategies for improving stress tolerance of crops to enhance food and green energy production for the increasing world population.