This year was another landmark year in the history of Rice Genetics Cooperative. Fourth International Rice Genetics Symposium was held at International Rice Research Institute, Los Ba no s from October 22-27. The symposium brought together 520 rice geneticists from 30 countries. Four days were devoted to presentation of papers and viewing of posters. On the last day, the participants were taken on a tour of research plots and laboratories. The program consisted of 30 plenary lectures, 130 oral papers during concurrent sessions and 240 posters. Three workshops on; molecular breeding, functional genomics and bioinformatics were also held. Proceedings of the symposium will be published in two volumes. Rice Genetics IV will contain plenary papers. Oral papers presented during the concurrent sessions and poster papers will be published as a supplement to Rice Genetics IV.

A meeting of the coordinating committee of RGC was held on October 24. Present were; A. Hirai, T. Sasaki, M. Yano, H. Satoh, Y. Sano, N. Kurata, A. Yoshimura, D.S. Brar and G.S. Khush. New office bearers of RGC were selected on the basis of consultation with delegates for the five-year term (2001-2005) and are listed on the inside of the front cover of this volume.

Dr. G.S. Khush who served as editor of Rice Genetics Newsletter with Dr. H.I. Oka (1984-1995), Dr. H. Morishima (1996-1997) and Dr. Y. Sano (1998-2000) requested that he be relieved of this responsibility. Dr. N. Kurata, Dr. J. Bennett and Dr. Ray Wu will serve as editors of RGN for the next term. We are looking forward to working with the new team for furthering the cause of Rice Genetics. Fifth International Rice Genetics Symposium will be held in 2005.

T. Kinoshita, Chairman