This year the Gordon Research Conference – Mycotoxins & Phycotoxins took place for the 14th time. It was held in New England (New Hampshire), USA from 21st to 26th of June at the Colby-Sawyer College.

More than 100 participants of more than 10 different countries from all over the world attended the conference. The following topics have been discussed:

• Toxic events in response to a changing world
• New hazards from new and known toxins
• Predictive technologies and models
• Biogeography and ecology of mycotoxins and phycotoxins
• Detection technologies
• Mechanisms of toxicity
• Economic impacts of mycotoxins and phycotoxins
• Genomics, proteomics and the phylogenetic basis of toxicity
• Public health and epidemiology: outbreak investigations

Daniel Boergel (Project Manager, BIOMIN Research Center) attended the conference and presented a poster on “Biodegradation of deoxynivalenol and analysis of metabolites thereof using different toxicity assays”.

The Gordon Research Conference assembled nearly all leading-edge scientists in the fields of mycotoxin and phycotoxin research. It covered a broad cross section in both research fields. The next event will take place in 2011.

Remarkable, besides the high quality of the talks, was the long time for discussion after every single presentation and has to be mentioned positively.

As a social event a soccer match between mycotoxin and phycotoxin researchers had been organized and to strengthen the participants for the next congress days a lobster meal was served afterwards.

The complete conference program can be found here: http://www.grc.org/programs.aspx?year=2009&program=mycotoxins.