RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES
VAVILOV ALL-RUSSIAN RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF PLANT INDUSTRY
St. Petersburg Saint-Petersburg Scientific Center, RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
Vavilov Society of Geneticists and Plant breeders
in St. Petersburg

First Information Letter

Dear Colleagues,

            November 25, 2012 is the 125th birthday of Academician N.I. Vavilov, an outstanding plant scientist, geneticist, taxonomist and geographer, founder of the national crop genetic resources collection, talented research manager, renowned not only within his home country but all over the world. The Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry (VIR) is pleased to announce the III International Vavilov Conference “N.I. Vavilov’s Ideas in the Modern World” to be held on November 6 – 9, 2012 in the framework of the celebrations dedicated to this memorable date.

Topics of the Conference:
1. N.I. Vavilov: "One ought to hurry as the life is short" (issues to be discussed: little-known facts about the life and research activities of N.I. Vavilov and his closest associates).

2. Theory of crop origin and evolution: history of the problem and modern research trends (issues to be discussed: development of Vavilov’s ideas on crop origin and homologous series in hereditary variation; historical geography of cultivated plants; modern concepts of plant domestication mechanisms; molecular genetic markers in crop evolution research).

3. Applied botany from Vavilov to the present days (issues to be discusses: classification and phylogenesis of cultivated plants and their wild relatives; the problem of plant species; population botany; structural botany as a tool to study the problems of reproduction, morphogenesis, adaptability, etc.; introduction of new species into cultivation; rare and forgotten agricultural crops).

4. Natural immunity of plants to harmful organisms (issues to be discussed: mechanisms of resistance, conjugate evolution of pathogens and host plants, plant genetic diversity in terms of resistance).

5. Plant genetic resources in the age of integration and molecular technologies (issues to be discussed: accumulation of genetic diversity and technologies of its safe conservation and evaluation, genotyping and phenotyping of plants, pre-breeding, computerization and management of plant resources collections).

6. Plant breeding: science, art or technology? (issues to be discussed: genetic, botanical and geographic principles of plant breeding; plant genetic resources collections for breeding; methods and modern technologies of plant breeding).

7. International cooperation and partnership: do plant genetic resources belong to all the mankind? (issues to be discussed: Vavilov’s Five Continents – history and modern trends in collaboration and partner relations; international legal aspects of plant genetic resources activities from Vavilov’s times to nowadays; intellectual property and genetic resources; cooperation and partnership in solving global problems related to climate change, food, bioresource and environmental security).

Procedure of attending the Conference

            The Conference will consist of plenary, sectional and poster presentations. Working languages of the Conference are Russian and English.
Those who intend to participate in the Conference should preliminary register before April 1, 2012 at www.vir.nw.ru. The programme of the Conference, the number and themes of its sections will depend on the presentations submitted. Each participant may submit only one presentation (participation in other presentations as a co-author is possible). Conference proceedings will be published as presentation abstracts before the Conference. The Organizing Committee reserves the right to select presentations from the submitted materials and deny publication of the abstracts that do not comply with the guidelines. Abstracts should be sent no later than May 1, 2012. Those sent on a later date will not be accepted. The abstracts will be published in author’s version, so the authors are responsible for their contents. After the Conference the best reports will be published in The Works on Applied Botany, Genetics and Plant Breeding.
            Abstracts may be sent to the e-mail address s.filimonenko@vir.nw.ru (Please note all files you send to the Local Secretariat must be properly entitled. The name of the file should clearly reflect its content. This will significantly decrease thetime required for processing your documents), while the printed version signed by the authors is to be mailed to the following address: Organizing Committee of the III International Vavilov Conference, VIR, 44 Bolshaya Morskaya Street, St. Petersburg 190000, Russia.
The Second Information Letter and Preliminary Programme of the Conference will be distributed after the receipt of the registration forms and abstracts for publication from the Conference participants.
Registration fee for the Conference participants from foreign countries will be U.S. $ 200. Payment should be made before July 1, 2012. Payment instructions will follow in the Second Information Letter.
Telephones of the organizers: +7 (812) 314-4848; 315-5093; fax: +7 (812) 571-8762.
For more details and updates please visit VIR’s website www.vir.nw.ru.

Guidelines for the authors

            To be accepted abstracts should conform to the Conference topics, be previously unpublished and contain novel theoretical and practical research results.  
The text of an abstract is to be sent in electronic format as an attached file and in printed version signed by the authors. Electronic version is expected to be typed in Word for Windows and provided in the *.rtf format. The name of the file should consist of the author’s family name and initials in Latin characters (for example, Petrov_SN.rtf). Font: Times New Roman, font size: 12 pt. Interline space: 1.0. All margins: 2 cm. Indentation: none. Word division: none. Text alignment: left margin. Interval between paragraphs: one blank space. Pagination: none. Page format: А4. Total text size: no more than 1 page. Illustrations, diagrams, tables, photos, list of references: none.
Text structure for those who does not speak Russian should be as follows:

• Title of the presentation in English (uppercase letters, bold). Alignment: centred.

                                                     < blank line >

• Initials and family names(s) of the author(s) (lowercase letters, bold). Alignment: centred.
• Employer (official name of the institution), city (town), country, e-mail of the main author (lowercase letters, regular). Alignment: centred.

                                                     < blank line >

• Main text of the abstract in English (lowercase letters, regular). Latin names of plants: regular italics.

Model abstract: