J Bingham: Achievements, prospects and limitations of conventional plant breeding; B G Forde: An introduction to the techniques of genetic manipulation; R J Ellis and A A Gatenby: Ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase: properties and synthesis; J A Downie, Q-S Ma, C D Knight, L Rossen, G Hombrecher, N J Brewin and A W B Johnston: Molecular genetics of Rhizobium leguminosarum nodulation and nitrogen fixation; J C Wootton and M J McPherson: Genes of nitrate and ammonium assimilation; D Boulter: Structure and regulation of the expression of pea storage protein genes; F Schoeffl, C-Y Lin and J L Key: Soybean heat shock proteins: temperature regulated gene expression and the development of thermotolerance; S W J Bright, P J Lea, P Arruda, N P Hall, A C Kendall, A J Keys, J S H Kueh, M L Parker, S E Rognes, J C Turner, R M Wallsgrove and B J Miflin: Manipulation of key pathways in photorespiration and amino acid metabolism by mutation and selection; K Hahlbrock, J Chappell and D N Kuhn: Rapid induction of mRNAs involved in defence reactions in plants; D C Baulcombe, R B Flavell, R E Boulton and G J Jellis: The use of cloned hybridisation probes to detect viral infections in a potato breeding programme; G Hussey: Clonal propagation of plants from cells, tissues and meristems; D S Ingram, C-S Loh, M V MacDonald and D M Newsholme: Secondary embryogenesis in Brassica: a tool for research and crop improvement; P Zambryski, L Herrera-Estrella, M de Block, M Van Montagu and J Schell: The use of the Ti plasmid of Agrobacterium to study the transfer and expression of foreign DNA in plant cells; Abstracts of poster contributions; B J Miflin: The genetic manipulation of plants and its application to agriculture: A summary of current progress and future possibilities.