From the Secretariat                                                                                                                

                       
 
Preparations for the 76^th Plenary Meeting of the ICAC since 1939 are underway. Official invitations to government and industry officials are being prepared, and a brochure describing the venue, hotel options and post-conference tours is now available.
 
The meeting will feature Open Sessions on frontiers of cotton science and implications for government policies, trends in inter-fiber competition and textile market growth, promotion of cotton, impacts of storage on quality, and the roles of biotech and non-biotech cotton varieties in production systems.
 
Uzbekistan last hosted the ICAC in 1996, and much has changed in Uzbekistan and in the world cotton industry during the past two decades. The purposes of ICAC meetings are to raise awareness of emerging issues, provide information relevant to decision making and to facilitate cooperation on matters of shared international concern.
 
Registration is available on line at www.ICAC.org
 
 
(Press releases are available via e-mail. To register for this free service, send your contact information to publications@icac.org)
 
The Secretariat of the Committee publishes information related to world cotton production, supply, demand and prices, and provides technical information on cotton production technology. Detailed statistics are found bimonthly in COTTON: Review of the World Situation, $200 per year via email, $245 per year in hard copy. A monthly outlook is available by email for $320 per year. Access to the latest weekly estimates of world cotton supply and use by the Secretariat is available on the Internet for $490 per year. Access Secretariat reports at www.icac.org.