PRESS RELEASE

2006 National Soybean Rust Symposium Proceedings Now Available

St. Paul, Minn. (December 18, 2006) – Proceedings from the 2006 National Soybean Rust Symposium are now posted on the PLANT MANAGEMENT NETWORK’S publicly available Soybean Rust Information Center at www.plantmanagementnetwork.org/infocenter/topic/soybeanrust/2006/.

Organized by The American Phytopathological Society (APS), the symposium concluded Friday, December 1 in St. Louis, MO. A total of 44 oral presentations and 67 posters comprised the event.

A diverse audience of more than 315 attendees participated in the symposium, which was coordinated by Don Hershman, University of Kentucky; a technical program planning committee co-chaired by Anne Dorrance, The Ohio State University and John Rupe, University of Arkansas; and an advisory board comprised of representatives of several key related organizations.

“The symposium was successful in meeting a range of soybean rust informational needs for a diverse group of stakeholders, including scientists, commodity, government, and industry stakeholders,” said Don Hershman, symposium coordinator. “We built on the successful foundation of last year’s symposium, but added concurrent breakout sessions on specific topics. These breakout sessions allowed us to present a large amount of information in a short period of time.

“The 2006 symposium provided an excellent forum for presenting key information, while also allowing plenty of time for discussion. The technical committee did an outstanding job of putting together a very satisfying and useful program,” Hershman said.

The organizers thank the 22 sponsors, oral and poster presenters, breakout session facilitators and recorders, and others who contributed to the event.

APS is a non-profit, professional scientific organization. The research of the organization’s 5,000 worldwide members advances the understanding of the science of plant pathology and its application to plant health.

The PLANT MANAGEMENT NETWORK, www.plantmanagementnetwork.org, is a cooperative not-for-profit resource for the applied plant and agricultural sciences. Designed to provide practitioners fast electronic access to proven solutions, PMN offers four science-based applied journals, four field trials publications, and an extensive searchable database comprised of thousands of web-based resource pages from the network's partner universities, companies, and associations.