Salinity and drought cause serious crop losses worldwide. Much progress has been made over recent years in identifying individual biological processes that are required for plant survival under abiotic stress. The main challenge today is to obtain an understanding of how these processes are coordinated within the plant, how different environmental and developmental stimuli are prioritized, and how different signalling pathways are integrated into an overall response. This conference will bring together world class scientists from universities, research institutes, field stations and industries to present and discuss their latest research achievements. Due to the importance of the topic for food safety the conference traditionally attracts participants from all continents, in particular Asia, South America, Australia and Africa.

The 2010 Gordon Research Conference on Salt and Water Stress in Plants covers aspects of gene expression, protein modification and trafficking, signalling pathways, ion and water homeostasis, and metabolism as well as whole-plant physiology and plant breeding. Based on the emerging evidence for the effects of abiotic stress on DNA and chromatin structure we also include for the first time a session on epigenetics. The conference further addresses the question of how information gained in model plants can be transferred to crop plants, and how fundamental knowledge can be translated into long-term strategies for improved stress tolerance in the field.