The International Conference on Bacterial Blight of Rice (ICBB) is held every 3 years, previously organized in Tsukuba (Japan) in 2004, Nanning (China) in 2007), Seoul, (Korea) in 2010, Hyderabad (India) in 2013 and the Philippines in 2016. In 2019, the Cuu Long Delta Rice Research Institute (CLRRI) hosted "The 6th International Conference on Bacterial Blight of Rice (ICBB6)" in Can Tho city, Vietnam. The conference took place from August 19 to August 21, 2019.

At the conference, information on genetic diversity and population structure of Xanthomonas bacteria was updated by the reporters from different countries; Molecular mechanisms of infection and pathogenesis were also announced by the world's leading scientists (Jan Leach and Adan J. Bogdanove (USA.) and Wolf Frommer (Germany)).

Notably, the conference focused on 5 approaches to prevent bacterial blight of rice:

1. By chemical drugs such as Starner 20 WP with Oxolinic acid or biological drugs such as extracts from bead tree, pepper, and fresh cow manure, etc. (Reeny Zacharis – Rice Research Station (India).

2. Biocontrol: Studies using microbial antagonists against bacterial blight such as bacteriophages (Nguyen Thi Thu Nga – Can Tho University (Vietnam) and Rejeki Desi – University of Jember (Indonesia)), Bacillus virus and Pseudomonas (Tran Vu Phen – Can Tho University (Vietnam)), and modifying the endogenous microbiota in rice (Fenghuan Yang – Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (China)) have been found to deliver good results.

3. Anti-resistance: research on anti-bacterial blight substances such as FeCl3 and K2HPO4 (Le Thanh Toan - Can Tho University (Vietnam)).

4. Disease resistance genes: research to identify new resistance genes (Nguyen Quoc Trung - Vietnam National University of Agriculture (Vietnam); Jagjeet Singh Lore -Punjab Agricultural University, India), research results of breeding rice varieties carrying new resistance genes to blight disease (Vo Thi Minh Tuyen - Agricultural Genetics Research Institute (Vietnam); Pham Thien Thanh - Food Crops Research Institute (Vietnam); Deo Mishra - Bayer BioScience (India).

5. Genetic modification for new bacterial blight resistance genes: some new bacterial blight resistance genes were created by gene editing technology such as SWEET genes (Wolf Frommer, Germany), and OsERF#123 (Mathilde Hutin, France).

Two lecturers of the Department of Molecular Biology and Applied Biotechnology, Faculty of Biotechnology, Vietnam National University of Agriculture, with financial supports from the Vietnam-Belgium Project and the Mekong Delta Rice Institute, participated in the conference and presented two reports and one poster entitled: “Evaluation of genetic resource for bacterial leaf streak disease caused by Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzicola”; “Identification of QTL associated with Bacterial blight resistance in Khangdan18 cultivar” (Nguyen Quoc Trung) and “Diversity of bacterial leaf blight disease strains in Northern Vietnam” (Tong Van Hai).