In Silico Analysis of Crop Science: Report on the First China-UK Workshop on Chips, Computers and Crops

A workshop on “Chips, Computers and Crops” was held in Hangzhou, China during September 26–27, 2008. The main objective of the workshop was to bring together China and UK scientists from mathematics, bioinformatics and plant molecular biology communities to exchange ideas, enhance awareness of each others’ fields, explore synergisms and make recommendations on fruitful future directions in crop science. Here we describe the contributions to the workshop, and examine some conceptual issues that lie at the foundations and future of crop systems biology.