INTERDROUGHT VIII Conference: Towards Cropping Systems Resilient to Complex Stresses

The InterDrought conference has been held on all continents since its inception in 1995, except in South America. This continent offers a very diverse set of agricultural systems increasingly exposed to drought, including dual-purpose crops (feed crops) and grasslands. Also, South America is home to an outstanding community of scientists researching areas ranging from optimizing production to understanding the physiological basis of genetic gain to applying new and improved breeding strategies (including establishing and leveraging information from managed stress environments). We believe that the worldwide scientific community will greatly benefit from harnessing the diversity of culture and thought. Furthermore, the InterDrought community will be greatly enriched by welcoming and creating an opportunity for scientists from a new continent to participate in this forum. Therefore, the addition of the South American community to the InterDrought will make us a whole worldwide community with local and regional representation across the globe.

Due to its location and easy access, Chile is a strategic hub for South America that will allow scientists from the entire region to attend the conference. We anticipate these scientists make significant contributions towards the improvement in the use of resources such as land, water, and nutrients, maximizing efficiencies to optimize yield in drought-prone environments through breeding, agronomy and systems analyses. South American agriculture is exposed to water deficits varying from intense droughts in the Mato Grosso do Sul savannas to heat stress during flowering in the Argentine Pampas, and full irrigation systems along the Pacific coasts and valleys of Patagonia. The scientific community's contribution to approaching these challenges by partnering with South American scientists can have a tremendous societal value considering that Argentina and Brazil are the largest soybean exporters worldwide, and countries on the Pacific coast are major suppliers of fruits and vegetables worldwide.