An international Symposium on Nitrogen Fixation Associated with Rice and Green Manuring Crops is planned to be held in June 1988 in India, to be followed by a joint Indo-U.S. Workshop to develop specific areas for future cooperative research. The symposium will cover the topics of nitrogen sources for rice, physiology and ecology of nitrogen fixation, biology of root and stem-nodule forming rhizobia, recombinant DNA application in rice culture, and agronomic aspects of nitrogen fixation. The binational workshop will consider plant-rhizobium interactions, molecular understanding and manipulation of the rice genome, the interaction between rice and associated microflora and the molecular manipulation of associated cyanobacteria. The workshop is to result in a report summarizing the state-of-knowledge in these areas, and specifying areas of problems for viable research to be proposed jointly by scientists from the U.S. and India. Scope: The two topics of nitrogen fixation and molecular biotechnology are of great interest in the U.S. and in India. They relate to various applications, one of which is agricultural productivity. Rice is a major crop in the U.S. and is crucial to nutrition in India and other South Asian countries. Collaboration on researching the parameters affecting nitrogen fixation and the application to rice production would be worthwhile scientifically and economically to the U.S. and India.
