The 10th European Nitrogen Fixation Meeting was held in Munich at the beginning of this month and attended by about 300 participants.  The program (while it is still available) can be found at following this link http://www.enfc2012.de/programme/conference/index.html First of all I would really like to thank the organizers.  Maybe I don’t get out much, but it found it to be one of the best conferences I have attended both from a scientific as well as a social perspective.  I found it incredible to think of how far this field has come since I have been involved.  The first conference I attended as a graduate student was the 12th North American Symbiotic Nitrogen Fixation Conference that was held in Ames Iowa in 1989.  I am not quite sure why I was sent, but I certainly would like to thank Turlough for sending his graduate students off in a rented car to drive 14 hours from Canada across the American midwest.  I still have fond memories of that conference.

The conference followed the usual order of a Nitrogen Fixation conferences.  The opening talk by Robert Boddey was a big picture talk about how nitrogen fixation can contribute toward a sustainable agricultural production.  This was followed by a keynote addresses given by Alan Downie and Ton Bisseling.  Both talks highlighted how far the field has come since the first European Nitrogen fixation conference.  Alan Downie pointed out that none of the model legumes that are used today were even mentioned in the first abstract book, whereas Ton Bisseling started with how far we have come from when “nodulins” were first described and ended with the common processes that can be seen in Parasponia.

Each of the sessions was well attended.  Many of the topics that were covered have been or are in the process of being published.  A conference is a quick way to catch up on reading the literature!  In addition, the food and drink that were available for the opening mixer as well as each of the poster sessions “greatly facilitated the exchange of scientific ideas”

I would personally like to thank Thomas Ott.  One of my biggest fears of going to a conference is to lose the poster/media in transit.  This happened.  I greatly appreciate Thomas’ effort to get pdf files of our posters reprinted and delivered to the conference venue.  Thank you. 

I look forward to the 11th Europeaon Nitrogen Fixation Conference which was announced to be hosted by Spain in the Canary Islands in 2013!