Preface

Abstract

International scientific conference “World Technological Trends in Agribusiness (WTTA 2020)” was held at Omsk State Agrarian University, Omsk, Russia on 4-5 July 2020. WTTA 2020 aimed to develop the scientific cooperation between Russian and international researchers in the field of agrotechnologies.The conference has become an agriculture forum for researchers, practitioners and scholars to discuss the most recent developments in agroengineering, agriculture and melioration. The participants have presented innovative engineering solutions for automated crop production and cattle breeding. A range of technological advances for treatment, processing, and storage of vegetal raw materials and livestock products has been presented. Environmentally-friendly agricultural solutions turned out to be quite a topical issue to explore.There were more than 300 papers submitted for publication. After the reviewing process, 270 of them were selected and approved for publication in the WTTA 2020 proceedings. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the conference was held in a mixed format. Most of the participants took part in presentia, at the same time, about 60 people made presentations via videoconferencing.Virtual participation was organized using the Zoom platform. Remote technologies made it possible to make presentations for participants from Stavropol State Agrarian University, Federal Research Centre of Biological Systems and Agrotechnologies (RAS, Orenburg), Altai State University, Mari State University, Krasnoyarsk Research Center (RAS, Krasnoyarsk), Ingush Agricultural Research Institute, etc.Links for participation in virtual meetings were sent round by the speakers freely. Sending invitations to colleagues was encouraged. Registration of listeners was not carried out, as a result, it was not possible to accurately estimate their number. Nevertheless, according to the organizing committee’s estimates, at least 30 listeners attended the conference sessions. Among them were employees of the Belarusian State University, Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization Engineers, and Kazakh National Agrarian University.At the time of the conference, Omsk State Agrarian University did not use the Zoom platform as the main tool for organizing distance education. In this regard, Zoom was used as a short-term trial period, which determined the tight timing of the main conference meetings.During the conference, five conference rooms equipped for videoconferencing were used. A special group of volunteer moderators was created to ensure the integrity of discussion and involvement of both local and virtual participants. The main task for the moderators was to repeat the audience’s questions to the virtual participants. Besides, they provided the right to a voice question to registered participants and read questions from listeners sent to the chat.Holding the conference in such format has become a new and valuable experience for the entire team of organizers. This experience was successful thanks to the participation of the university administration, student volunteers and assistance from the client department of the Zoom platform. At last, we would like to express our gratitude to the editorial team and reviewers as well as to the conference organizers. We are glad that, despite all the challenges associated with the coronavirus pandemic, we were able to collect and review the papers and prepare the WTTA 2020 proceedings.