Members of the Climate Crops Centre, Dr. Sandra Cvejić, Dr. Aleksandra Radanović, and Dr. Boško Dedić, together with their colleagues from the Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, Dr. Nada Hladni and Dr. Vladimir Miklič, participated in the 21st International Sunflower Conference (August 20-24, 2024) which was held in Wuyuan, Inner Mongolia, China.
The organizers of the conference were the Agricultural University of Inner Mongolia and the International Sunflower Association. The conference was attended by 258 registered participants, and the presentations were thematically grouped into sections: sunflower genetics and breeding, sunflower cultivation and production, genomics and transcriptomics, genetic resources and their use, broomrape and resistance to herbicides, physiology and abiotic stress, disease resistance and pest control, as well as seed quality and processing.
Dr. Sandra Cvejić gave a plenary lecture entitled “Innovations in sunflower breeding for enhanced drought adaptation”, and Dr. Boško Dedić and Dr. Aleksandra Radanović presented their work with lectures “Resistance of IFVCNS inbred lines to race F with origin from Spain” and “Unravelling mechanisms of drought tolerance and stress recovery in sunflower”, respectively.
As a part of the conference, a meeting of an international consortium was held, the aim of which is to standardize the determination of the virulence of the broomrape. Dr. Sandra Cvejić, who coordinates the work of this body, is the head of the consortium. The meeting was dedicated to considering ways of cooperation of institutions whose program of work includes broomrape research, such as the Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, France’s National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), Sustainable Agriculture Institute (IAS-SCIC), National Agricultural Research and Development Institute (NARDI-Fundulea), Moldova State University, and a number of companies whose portfolio includes sunflower hybrids.
As a part of the closing ceremony of the conference, a special part of the program was dedicated to the awarding of the “Pustovoit” award. The award was presented to Dr. Vladimir Miklič for his contribution to the development of sunflower research in the world. This award is a recognition for persistent work on sunflowers for many years.
