| Session 1 | Placing salt and water deficit in a physiological and agricultural context |
| Chair: Tim Flowers (University of Sussex) |
| André Lauchli (University of California, Davis)
"Physiological Traits of Salt Tolerance in Crop Plants" |
| Ted Hsaio (University of California, Davis) |
| Session 2 | Whole plant and physiological integration of the plant osmotic stress responses |
| Chair: Robert Sharp (University of Missouri, Columbia) |
| Yajun Wu (Pennsylvania State University)
"Modification of Expansin Gene Expression in Maize Primary Roots at Low Water Potentials" |
| Rana Munns (CSIRO, Australia)
"Distinguishing osmotic stress and salt stress responses" |
| Sessions 3&4 | Ion/solute and water transport |
| Chairs: Michael Hasegawa (Purdue University) and Wolf B. Frommer (Universität Tübingen) |
| Eduardo Blumwald (University of Toronto)
"The Role of Vacuolar Na+/H+ Antiporters in Plant Salt Tolerance" |
| Frans Maathuis (University of York, UK)
"Water Stress and its Effects on Ion Channel Mediated Transport" |
| Ursula Halfter (University of Arizona)
"A Novel Sodium/Proton Antiporter and its Regulation by a Protein Kinase Pathway" |
| Heven Sze (University of Maryland)
"Diversity and Regulation of Calcium Pumps" |
| Marla Binzel (Texas A&M)
"Vacuolar Proton Pumps, Sodium Accumulation and Salinity" |
| Michael Palmgren (Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Copenhagen, Denmark)
"Involvement of Ion Pumps in Salt Tolerance" |
| Maarten Chrispeels (University of California, San Diego)
"Aquaporins and Water Permeability" |
| Session 5 | Role of ABA in signaling in response to salt and water stress |
| Chair: Elizabeth Bray (University of California, Riverside) |
| Erwin Grill (Technische Universitat Munchen, Munich, Germany) |
| Peter McCourt (University of Toronto)
"Crosstalk in the ABA pathway: How Does it Affect Hormone Signal Transduction?" |
| Session 6 | Signaling and osmosensing |
| Chair: Jian-Kang Zhu (University of Arizona) |
| Kazuo Shinozaki (RIKEN, Tsukuba, Japan)
"Plant Gene Expression and Signal Transduction in Osmotic Stress Response" |
| Teun Munnik (University of Amsterdam)
"Osmotic Stress Activates Distinct MAPK- and Lipid Signalling Pathways in Plants" |
| Sheng Luan (University of California, Berkeley)
"Osmosensing in Stomatal Guard Cells" |
| Takeshi Mizuno (Nagoya University, Japan)
"His-to-Asp Phosphorelay as a Signal Transduction Mechanism in Response to Environmental Stimuli in Higher Plants" |
| Session 7 | Interaction of salinity/water deficit with oxidative stress |
| Chair: Ray Bressan (Purdue University) |
| Shigeru Shigeoka (Kinki University, Nara, Japan)
"The Potential of the Defense System of Plants to Oxidative Damage Caused by Environmental Stresses" |
| Gozal Ben-Hayyim (Volcani Center, Bet Dagan, Israel)
"Salt-induced Genes Related to Oxidative Stress" |
| Session 8 | Biotechnological approaches towards metabolic engineering |
| Chair: Andrew Hanson (University of Florida, Gainesville) |
| Michael Nuccio (University of Florida, Gainesville)
"Metabolic Engineering of Glycine Betaine Synthesis in Tobacco" |
| Doris Rentsch (Tubingen, Germany)
"Transporters for Compatible Solutes in Arabidopsis and Tomato" |
| Norio Murata (National Institute for Basic Biology, Okazaki)
"Stress Tolerance of Glycinebetaine-producing Transgenic Plants" |
