This conference is unique in its interdisciplinary nature and also exposes students and developing scholars to new statistical research directly relevant to agriculture. We emphasize the application of statistics in solving real-life problems while highlighting agriculture and recognizing the joint effort of the statistician and the agricultural researcher. The relaxed atmosphere of this conference allows for participants to submit abstracts made jointly by the statistician and the researcher. Presentation of data sets and analyses which motivated the work shares equal importance with development of the statistical theory.