History of the ECFGs

This is the official web site of the European Conference on Fungal Genetics, the largest periodic conference in the field in Europe. Starting in 1994, the key event that gave rise to ECFGs was an EMBO workshop celebrated on 13-19 April 1984 in Rhenen, NL, in which the details of the recently accomplished transformation methods for Aspergillus nidulans and A. niger were disclosed. The idea of celebrating a fungal meeting in the intervening years between two Asilomar Fungal Genetics meetings, organised bianually in California by the Genetical Society of America, was originally discussed in a meeting of the British Mycological Society in 1990, which ended with John Peberdy being commissioned to organize ECFG1, which was held at Nottingham, UK, in August 1992. ECFG16 has recently been held in Innsbruck. The series have only been interrupted by COVID19, and even in this case the conference has been fully coordinated with the Asilomar meeting to keep the one-year-in-Europe-one-year-in-the-US schedule. ECFG2 was organized in 1994 by Kees van den Hondel in Lunteren, with attendants fitting into the conference center Der Blije Werelt, in Lunteren, NL. ECFG4 by Paul Tudzinsky in Münster, RFA.