Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Conference participants continue to emphasize that extensive discussions, constructive feedback and opportunities for collaboration among experts in this field are the most valuable features of this conference that draw participants from around the world. This year’s participants hailed from various organizations and universities in the US, Germany, France, Argentina, Ireland and China.  The meeting was held fully in-person with 56 participants, up from 46 participants last year.

Similar to last year, one of the main highlights of this year’s meeting was the increase of collaborations in presented research with 11 out of 26 papers, or 42% including or consisting of co-authors from different organizations/universities. This regional project is one of the main catalysts for these collaborative works. All participants attend this meeting to hear about state-of-the-art research conducted at other institutions that are in the area of expertise addressed by the project. As well, this meeting remains an important venue for graduate students to present their work. This year, 23 (up from 16 last year) graduate students attended the conference, many of them presenting papers co-authored with faculty members.

Mindy Mallory announced the procedure for submitting final papers to be posted as electronic proceedings on the NCCC-134 website. The site address is http://www.farmdoc.uiuc.edu/nccc134/ . The site will continue to hold committee announcements as well as all papers from all past meetings.

Presented manuscripts will be digitally published at https://legacy.farmdoc.illinois.edu/nccc134/paperarchive.html after June 1, 2023.