Sorghum Genetics Executive Committee Meeting

Monday, January 14, 2008

Jeff Dahlberg called the meeting to order. 7 people were in attendance. Two primary issues were discussed, funding and the potential for an International meeting.

On funding issues: After discussing issues with the National Sorghum Producers lobbyist in DC, there is little room for additional funding for the next fiscal year. Funding appropriations should move fast, as the elections are about to take place and there was little new money that will be on the table. There are a couple of areas that do show some promise and this is funding from DOE and perhaps within the new farm bill, which has an Energy Title that will have some funds available for research. The issue is how does the community come together to try and put forward a comprehensive proposal that has a chance at being funded. Looking at other sources of funding other than NSF makes a lot of sense in the next couple of years.

International meeting: Jeff Dahlberg brought up the fact that the USDA is proposing a "Sorghum BioEnergy Meeting" sometime in July-August of this year in Houston, TX (don't ask me why). He felt that this might provide an opportunity to "piggy-back" a meeting with the sorghum genomics community, since a lot of the participants in the bioenergy meeting will be similar. This would help defray costs and could be used to bring in African breeders and scientist to the USDA meeting and all that entails. It was felt that this might be a viable option.

Sandy asked about perhaps sending out another survey to update the community on needs and issues facing the community. The last survey was several years ago and we've accomplished a couple of the main targeted issues that the community had identified, ie. harmonizing the chromosome nomenclature and sequencing sorghum. She felt there was a need to identify where we go from these accomplishments. This could be done by evaluating the old survey and sending out a new one.

One other note was Cleve Franks was leaving USDA and moving to private industry. The committee felt that Cleve needed to continue with his term.