Division 1 : Plant System Biology
		Chairman: Dimah Habash (UK)

Plant System Biology : The cultivated plant in a field

This division would cover the research on plant functioning and development in the context of a cultivated field (e.g. in a canopy, in interaction with a climate and a soil, and under the influence of cropping techniques). This division should include research on grain and fruit biology and quality in the context of a cultivated plant. It would also include Plant Nutrition,  root-soil interactions and Plant-disease/insects interactions which are increasingly related to plant physiology. A strong emphasis could be put on the functioning of individual plants and of plants in various cropping systems (monoculture, intercropping, double cropping, etc.). Experimental work and modelling activities dealing with phenology, architecture, photosynthesis, evapotranspiration, mineral nutrition, plant competition, sink-source relationships, etc. could be key-areas.
The objective is here clearly to attract the many researchers working on plant and crop physiology and who are now more linked to molecular biology and genetics than to agronomy. Most of them have left ESA but they may come back if we offer a division which places this Plant Systems Biology at the cross roads of biology and cropping systems.