Drought is weather-related natural disaster, which affects vast regions for months or years and has impact on food production. Drought is related to a deficiency of precipitation over a season or an extended period of time. The most immediate consequence is a fall in crop production, due to inadequate and poorly distributed rainfall. Given the severity of drought, a central challenge for researchers and policy makers is to devise technologies that lend greater resilience to agricultural production under this stress.

InterDrought conferences, in view of above, serve as a platform for presenting and debating key issues and strategies relevant for improving drought and other stress tolerance in crops. The main mission of the conference is to explore the possibilities of scientific and technological applications in crop improvement.

In continuation of earlier InterDrought Conference held in France (ID-I, 1995), Italy (ID-II, 2005), China (ID-III, 2009) and Australia (ID-IV, 2013), the next InterDrought Conference, InterDrought-V (ID-V), is being organized in India at Hyderabad International Convention Center (HICC), Hyderabad, India during 21-25 February, 2017. Please mark these dates in your calendar for participating in ID-V conferences.

Preliminary information about ID-V is available at http://ceg.icrisat.org/idv/. For more details, please contact Dr. Rajeev K. Varshney, Research Program Director, Grain Legumes (r.k.varshney@cgiar.org).