AUSTRALIA—GERMANY WORKSHOP ON BIODIVERSITY

The Shine Dome, 13-17 March 2006

Welcome and opening remarks
by Dr Jim Peacock, President, Australian Academy of Science

In welcoming all the participants, Dr Peacock expressed the Academy’s pleasure in hosting this workshop between Germany and Australia and was confident it would present continuing mutual benefits. He thanked the Department of Education, Science and Training for its support; and, although there had already been many scientific interactions between the two countries, he hoped this would be the first of a series of such workshops.

He said biodiversity was important not only for plant improvement programs around the world and precision farming, but for the care, management and restoration of natural ecosystems. For example, measuring the important functionality of plants would help us cope with, and fight, disease, nutritional shortages, incursion of weeds, etc., in food and fibre production systems and native ecosystems.

CSIRO Plant Industry, where Dr Peacock has worked for 43 years, is an example of how it is possible to arrange rewarding collaborative interactions. In the past, although the importance of exploring metabolomics and functional physiological genomics of plants was understood, CSIRO was not equipped to carry this out in terms of human resources. A successful collaborative arrangement was made with one of the Max Planck Institutes, in Golm, run by Lothar Willmitzer. It has seen the exchange of postdoctoral fellows and joint research projects, and continues to be a positive initiative.