The International Society for Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions (IS-MPME) congress was held in Portland, Oregon from 17-21 July 2016. The congress had 950 attendees (of which 289 were students) representing 40 countries delivering 185 presentations and 722 posters.  

Professor Dave Berger, research leader of the Molecular Plant-Pathogen Interactions research group was invited to give a talk entitled “Integration of resistance QTL, expression QTL and co-expression modules reveals molecular responses of maize to the fungal pathogen Cercospora zeina” and also presented two posters. Poster presentations were also given by Prof. Lucy Moleleki, Brigitte Langenhoven and Miekie Human.

Other researchers representing South Africa at the congress were Prof. Ian Dubery, Prof. Eduard Venter and Nicolis Vittorio from UJ and Hester van Schalkwyk from UFS.