International Strawberry Symposium 2020, topics and speakers officially announced
The panel of speakers and the topics of the 9th edition of the International Strawberry Symposium, scheduled to take place in Rimini from 2 to 6 May 2020 and organized by Università Politecnica delle Marche and the Italian Council for agricultural research and analysis of the agricultural economy (CREA), in association with the International Society for Horticulture Science (ISHS), have recently been finalized.
Over the course of the five-days event, a total of 15 speakers will discuss four topics: genetics, agronomy, certification/defence/physiology, and human health.
From a genetic perspective, Aaron Liston – Professor of Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State University – will retrace and revisit the origin of the octoploid strawberry. Steven J. Knapp – Professor and Director of the strawberry cultivation program at the University of California – will speak about “Traditional and Genome-Informed Breeding Strategies for Delivering the Next Generation of Strawberry Cultivars.” Qing-Hua Gao – Senior Professor at the Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences – will focus on “Interactions of strawberry with fungus pathology and new germplasms enhanced with disease resistance”. Béatrice Denoyes – Senior Researcher at the National Institute for Agricultural Research in Bordeaux – will address the topic of “Breeding for fruit and daughter plants yield.”
At the agronomic level, Yiannis Ampatzidis – Professor at the University of Florida’s Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, will introduce the topic of “Automation, artificial intelligence, and robotics in strawberry production”. Anita Sønsteby – Research Professor at the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research – will discuss “Flowering and dormancy relations of strawberry and effects of management and a changing climate for production”. Peter Melis – Researcher at Proefcentrum Hoogstraten in Belgium – will consider how modern substrate cultivation offers possibilities for a minimum of residues on strawberry. Zhang Yuntao – Director of the Strawberry Program at Beijing Academy of Forestry and Pomology Sciences and China National Germplasm Repository of Strawberry in Beijing, and Chairman of Strawberry Section of Chinese Society for Horticulture Science – will report on the great impact of the 7th ISS on Strawberry Research and Industry in China.
The topics of plant certification, pest and disease control and post-harvest physiology will be discussed in an additional session of the Symposium. In particular, Ioannis Tzanetakis – Professor of Plant Virology at the University of Arkansas – will introduce the “Strawberry plant certification in the 21st century: from grafting to bioinformatics and beyond”. Juan Carlos Díaz Ricci – Senior Professor at the Argentine National Research Council (CONICET) and at the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán – will discuss the “Introduction and suppression of the defence response mediated by fungal pathogenes in strawberry plants”, while Sonia Osorio Algar – Professor at the University of Malaga in charge of the fruit biotechnology laboratory – will focus on “Network regulatory analysis of strawberry fruits post-harvest physiology revealed by metabolomics profiling”.
Finally, the effects of strawberries on human health will also be part of a specific discussion by various experts. Stefano Predieri – Head of the CNR’s Bioeconomy Institute, Bologna Research Unit – will speak about “What can we learn from consumers’ perception of strawberry quality?”. Francisco A. Tomás-Barberán – Professor at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Murcia – will present the “Role of ellagitannins in strawberry human health effects”. Britt Burton-Freeman – Chair of the Department of Food Science and Nutrition at the Illinois Institute of Technology – will focus on “Strawberries and their polyphenolic metabolites in glucoregulation and vascular health.” Daniele Del Rio – Associate Professor of Human Nutrition at the University of Parma and Head of the University of Parma’s Faculty of Advanced Food and Nutrition Studies – will finally discuss strawberry polyphenols: metabolism in humans and putative biological activities.
