Rice Genetics Newsletter 12 (1995)
A. Report of the Coordinating Committee of Rice Genetics Cooperative
 This year was another landmark year in the history of Rice Genetics Cooperative. The Third International Rice Genetics Symposium was held from October 16-20, 1995 at the Edsa Plaza Hotel, Manila, Philippines. It brought together 500 rice geneticists from 30 countries. Four days were devoted to presentation of papers and viewing of posters. On the last day of the symposium, participants visited International Rice Research Institute at Los Banos and were shown experimental plots and laboratories.

A meeting of the Coordinating Committee of  RGC was held on October 16, 1995 at the Edsa Plaza Hotel. Present were: Morishima and isozyme loci, cloned genes and blast resistance genes have been held and published in RGN 7 and 11, respectively. Some problems exist in assigning gene symbols for the following traits: i.e.. (1) dwarfness. (2) embryo mutants, (3) cytoplasmic male sterility, (4) grain protein mutant, (5) cloned genes for isozymes, (6) designation of RFLP and PCR markers. (7) designation of QTL's. Committees have been appointed to look into problems of gene symbolization for these traits.

Rules for gene symbolization were reviewed. Committee agreed to remove the hyphen between the gene symbol and the numeral in case of mimic series. It is also usable to put the allele designation at the same level as the gene symbol instead of superscript. Allele designation will be separated by the hyphen. Thus, the previous designation of Amp-4' will be rewritten as Amp4-l.

However, the conventional usage such as dp-l, d-18k and Amp-41 is available on every occasion in accordance with the rule 6 of rice gene symbolization, if clearly designated.

Recent investigations have revealed the position of genes on chromosome arms. The following rule was therefore formulated as a means of presenting this information in the chromosome map. It is consistent with usage in other organisms such as maize, tomato and Drosophira.

As soon as the arm location of a gene is known, the locus numbering should be revised to reflect that information. The short arm of each chromosome is designated as the left arm and zero position is the left end of the short arm.

New office bearers of RGC were elected for a five-year term and are listed on the inside of the front cover. We are looking forward to working with them from furthering the cause of rice genetics.

We wish to thank Takahashi and Lampe and other outgoing members of RGC for their contributions and leadership during 1990-1995.

T.Kinoshita. Chairman

G. Rothschild. Co-Chairman