Participation in the 75th meeting of the Mycological Society of America
Prepared by: Dr Mesfin Bogale (Post-doctoral fellow working on sequencing of Fusarium mitochondrial genomes).
The 75th annual meeting of the Mycological Society of America was held at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 5-9 August 2007. I participated in this meeting by giving two oral presentations and presenting a poster. The two oral presentations were entitled “Species-specific primers for Fusarium redolens and a PCR-RFLP technique to distinguish among the three clades of Fusarium oxysporum” and “Characterization of Fusarium oxysporum isolates from Ethiopia using SSR, AFLP and DNA sequence analyses.” The poster was entitled “A new bark canker disease of the tropical hardwood tree, Cedrelinga cateneformis in Ecuador.” As this was my first opportunity to participate at such a big international conference by presenting papers, the experience I gained was enormous. One of my oral presentations was made at a special session dedicated to presentations by postdoctoral fellows. From the papers presented at this session, I have come to learn that the scientific standard of research done at FABI in general is quite high. I also gathered that the launching of genome-level research projects in the TPCP and CTHB is timely and will help keep these programmes at the fore front of science and research.
Most of the participants at the meeting were from the USA, as one would expect. However, there were also many accomplished mycologists from the rest of the world. I had a chance to meet and discuss scientific issues with a number of these well-published scientists whom I previously knew only by name. My participation has also helped me establish professionally valuable links with quite a few young scientists from other African countries who also participated at the meeting.
I am grateful to the DST/NRF Centre of Excellence in Tree Health Biotechnology (CTHB) which covered all costs incurred, i.e., transportation, registration, accommodation and daily allowance. The presentations that I gave at the MSA meeting were findings of projects that have been financially supported by the NRF.
