Sixth call Download "sixth call" in pdf

Dear colleagues,

This is the 6^th Call for the 9^th ECPA conference. It’s been a long time since the last call and we have much to tell you. We’ve been working hard preparing the conference for you! At this point, the Editor of the conference, Dr. John Stafford, together with the members of the Scientific Committee are about to finish the review of the oral communication papers. Some of the authors have already been contacted and the rest will receive an email at the end of the process reporting about their papers.

The early bird registration deadline has been extended to March 17^th to coordinate with the full papers revision process. Do not wait until the last minute! Registering in advanced will help us to have a better indication of the possible attendance.

Authors of already accepted poster communications are invited to submit a final version of their abstract according to the instructions to be downloaded at the conference website. Deadline for these final poster abstract versions to be submitted is March 15^th. Carefully following the instructions will ease the layout process. Posters will only be accepted in MSPowerpoint following the provided templates (already available at the website). Poster templates should be selected according to the session your abstract has been assigned to. Authors of poster communications will be contacted in short to confirm their poster sessions. We strongly encourage you to submit your finished posters before March 15^th. As you may know, we are planning to edit an electronic Book of Posters displaying all poster images together with their respective abstracts to be delivered at your arrival.

We have also slightly modified the program. It will not be very different to the final one. You will see that we will start the first two days of the 9^th ECPA all together in plenary sessions. On Monday, July 8^th, Dr. Lowenberg-DeBoer will report on Precision Agriculture implementation and afterwards Dr. Gebbers will discuss PA perspectives. On Tuesday July 9th, Dr. Fountas will review Precision Horticulture state-of-the-art and Dr. Tisseyre will describe the status of Precision Viticulture. After the plenary sessions there will be a long coffee break to allow attendees to visit the various company stands, analyse the poster communications and for networking. Note that the program has been designed to enable spontaneous group discussions and meetings as well as to promote social relationships.

The last day, Thursday July 11^th, we want to close the conference with a roundtable discussion on the slogan of the conference ‘Facing new challenges, providing new solutions’. Raj Khosla, as the moderator, and the keynote speakers will review the conference and see how the presented communications can contribute with solutions to the precision agriculture challenges. After the roundtable discussion it will come the closing ceremony where the ISPA president will proclaim the location of the 10^th ECPA.

In the next call we will tell you about directions and transportation (see the website for details). For the moment, we encourage all of you to arrange your travel plans so that you arrive to Lleida on Sunday July 7^th before 7 p.m. to be able to attend the welcome reception that will include an exclusive guided evening tour and a cold buffet while you enjoy meeting your colleagues and admire the view of the town and its surroundings.

See you in Lleida
Ens veiem a Lleida!
¡Nos vemos en Lleida!

The organizing committee