On behalf of the New Phytologist Trust and symposium organisers I am pleased to invite you to participate in a symposium entitled ‘Stomata 2012’ to be held at Manchester Conference Centre, Manchester, UK. Full details about the meeting are below and on the linked pages, however if you have any questions please do contact New Phytologist Symposia.

We look forward to welcoming you in Manchester.

Deputy Managing Editor, New Phytologist

Research on stomata is centred on two scales, the leaf and the world.  At the leaf scale research is concerned with the mechanisms that control the development and operation of stomata, while at the global scale something like 10²³ to 10²⁴ stomata exert major controls on the earth’s carbon and water cycles.  Substantial advances in the understanding of stomatal development and function have occurred since the last stomatal meeting held in the USA in 2006, while recently we have begun to understand the impacts of stomata on plant evolution and how evolution has influenced stomatal form and function.

The 29th New Phytologist Symposium aims to bring together stomatal researchers from the two major scales of study in order to learn of new developments in understanding while aiming to investigate the benefits of intellectual crossovers in developing the field of stomatal research.