日本農芸化学会2012年度大会

Annual Meeting of the Japan Society for 
Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Agrochemistry, 2012

Kenji Kano

Please allow me to express a few words of welcome for the Annual Meeting of the Japan Society for Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Agrochemistry 2011.

Like the 2011 meeting, the 2012 annual meeting will be held in Kyoto for five days, between Thursday, March 22 and Monday, March 26. The original plan was to hold this meeting in Sendai, and many involved parties, especially those in the Tohoku branch, had been working on preparations for it.

However, the Tohoku earthquake on March 11, 2011 caused an unprecedented degree of damage to the region. In light of the emergency situation, it was hurriedly decided to hold the 2012 annual meeting in Kyoto as well. Given these circumstances, the favorable location of Kyoto Women's University as well as vivid memories of the courteous students who assisted us during the 2006 annual meeting were factors in helping us decide that Kyoto Women's University was the ideal site for our 2012 annual meeting.

When we explained to the university officials why we wanted to hold our conference there once again, they agreed to cooperate with our plans, even going so far as to modify some of the university's plans for the year. We would like to take this opportunity to express our deep appreciation to everyone at Kyoto Women's University who has been involved in planning this conference.

The first-day sessions on March 22 will take place at the Westin Miyako, Kyoto in Keage, which will include awards ceremonies and prize acceptance speeches, followed by a social hour in the same location. There will be no general meetings on that day, and the awards ceremonies and other activities will take place in the afternoon.

Activities on the 23rd to the 25th will take place on the campus of Kyoto Women's University and will include general presentations, symposium, exhibitions, luncheon seminars, and informal social gatherings. Continuing on the 25th and 26th, we will take our activities out into the city of Kyoto, to the Shogoin Temple, where we will hold a Frontier Symposium as a venue for younger researchers to exchange ideas and information.

Agrochemistry has seen remarkable successes in a variety of fields, including life, food, and environmental science, but we have planned the 2012 symposia as a venue for looking toward the earliest possible reconstruction and revival of the Tohoku region and to discuss new ways of deploying agrochemistry as a means of achieving that end.

As in previous years, we will select "Topics Awards" from the issues presented in the general presentations. Participants may nominate their own topics, and we hope to receive a large number of applications. In the past, we have published collections of topics for news organizations in booklet form, but from this annual meeting onward, PDFs using a new format will be available to the general public on the Internet. We hope that this new form of publication will motivate more people to find out about the achievements of agrochemical research.

Oral presentations, including general presentations, will all be projected from the presenters' own computers onto LCD projectors. We will make use of our experiences in conducting the joint Kansai-Chubu conferences (October 2011) where the same system was used to help presenters give clear and persuasive lectures. However, it will be essential for all the presenters to cooperate fully with us in order to ensure that the meeting proceeds smoothly. Please be sure to check your computer in advance according to the manual.

Note also that the collection of abstracts will be distributed over the Internet in PDF form, not in booklet form. This new format will allow presenters to provide longer abstracts of their presentations and to incorporate tables, photographs, and other illustrations, thus improving both the quality and quantity of information. In order to allow fast downloads of the PDFs of the abstracts, we urge you to apply ahead of time, and we have set the fees at a low level. In order to broaden the reach of this conference, we also offer reduced participation fees for students.

In addition, this meeting includes two programs open to the general public, based on the theme of "Links with Society.” On the 23rd, we will hold an event called "Challenging Kyoto Cuisine: Integrating Agrochemistry and Gastronomy." Chefs from Kyoto's traditional Japanese restaurants and university research students will join forces to present Kyoto cuisine incorporating the results of scientific research. The participants will be able to sample the results accompanied by the explanation of the chefs.

Large numbers of high school students from all over Japan will gather on March 24 for the Junior Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Agrochemistry Society Meeting, where they will present the results of a broad range of scientific research. Excellent research projects will not only be awarded but also be described in our journal Kagaku to Seibutsu "Chemistry and Life."

The JABEE Luncheon Symposium on the 24th will provide a venue for sharing a wide range of information among industry, government, and academia, and the Industry-University-Government Academic Exchange Committee Forum will sponsor the IUFoST-Japan Symposium on the 25th. Furthermore, on Thursday, March 21, the afternoon preceding the meeting, a chemistry and biology symposium titled "Investigating Forms of Food through Images and Sound" will be held at the Kyoto University Clock Tower Centennial Hall.

Finally, we are extremely grateful for the various kinds of support that we have received in organizing this meeting, including contributions from companies and organizations, exhibitions, sponsorship of luncheon seminars, and placement of advertising. We sincerely hope that this meeting will serve as a venue for distributing and acquiring new information as well as for lively debates, and that it will prove to be a meaningful five days of amiable professional interactions.