Good afternoon again. On behalf of the organizers, I would like to make a few concluding remarks at the end of this symposium, though I wonder if I am qualified for this role in this female-centered symposium. The main theme of today's symposium was to "promote an active role for female researchers in agriculture, food and nutrition research." By listening to the excellent presentations and discussions, I'm sure we have gained  a deeper understanding on the vital and essential role of female researchers in agriculture and nutrition research. As Mr. Bessho, Director General of MAFF, mentioned in his welcome remark, the gender issue is an urgent and prioritized issue here in Japan, initiated by the Prime Minister. It must be treated in a broader context and not just limited to agriculture research.

However, I hope agriculture research or the society of agriculture research can be or can show a good and advanced model in Japan. We at JIRCAS will continue to make efforts to diversify our research environment to obtain better and meaningful research results, and eventually JIRCAS can be a real international research center of international standard in terms of female activity. This symposium, as you may have already noticed, has another objective, which is to reaffirm the importance of nutrition concepts in agricultural research. As many speakers stressed, we are expected to promote, or rather we must promote nutrition- sensitive agricultural research as all of you agreed that health issue or nutrition issue is more important than income issues, which we are now tackling.

I am sure that JIRCAS is in a good position to deal with this issue because this issue requires, again, a broader mind or broader academic experiences to solve, so we can make full use of the interdisciplinary nature of the capacity of JIRCAS to tackle this problem, and we will try to establish an even wider partnership domestically and internationally in this respect.

I would like to take this moment to thank all our speakers especially the three keynote speakers,  Dr.  Ismahane Elouafi, Dr. Howarth Bouis, and Professor Noriko Sudo, for your excellent speeches, and to the other speakers too, as well as our session chairs for moderating and summarizing the presentations and the discussion. I would like to offer a special word of gratitude to our co-organizer, the United  Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability, and our cooperators, the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Research Council Secretariat of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries,  the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, the Tokyo University for Agriculture and Technology, the Tokyo University of Foreign Study, the Greater Tokyo Initiative (TAMA Association), and J-FARD.

Finally, thank you to all symposium participants and to everyone involved in planning and holding this event. We are truly grateful for your valuable contribution and attendance. Thank you again. Thank you very much.