This application is submitted to request funding for the 24th National Nutrient Databank Conference to be hosted by the Nutrition Coordinating Center located within the Division of Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota. The two and one- half day conference is being planned for July 27-29, 2000 and will be held in Saint Paul, Minnesota with the Radisson Hotel Saint Paul as the conference headquarters. Participants at the conference will include men and women from nutrition and health professions who work with and depend upon food composition data for a variety of purposes and who represent federal agencies, nutrition researchers from academic institutions, nutrient database designers, and food manufacturers. The use of food composition data is essential to understanding the impact of nutritional factors and exposures on the etiology, prevention and treatment of disease. The National Nutrient Databank Conference is held annually to provide a forum where collaborations in generating food composition data can originate, achievements and challenges in development of nutrient data can be shared, and food and nutrient database expansion and applications can be explored to serve the needs of research and industry. Key topics in this conference will highlight current changes in dietary guidance and the implications for food and nutrient databases and food labeling; challenges in maintaining databases in a rapidly changing marketplace; database issues related to food grouping; issues related to adding nutraceuticals and non-nutritive food components to databases; current information on analytical values for new food components; an overview of new nutrient calculation software; national nutrition monitoring updates; and future plans for the National Nutrient Data Bank.