The National Symposium on Systematic and Evolutionary Botany and the 14th Youth Symposium was held at Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) on November 26-28. More than 500 scholars and students from 100 institutions and universities were present at the meeting, and 200 representatives participated in the symposium online.
Prof. Chen Jin, Prof. Wang Xiaoquan, Academician Hong Deyuan, Mr. Li Runming addressed the symposium respectively. Prof. Yang Yongping hosted the opening ceremony.
The participants gathered together to discuss advances in plant taxonomy and resources; phylogeny and biogeography; paleobotany; speciation and adaptive evolution. They also talked about progress and challenges facing studies on systematics, forming and protection of biodiversity, and application of genomics, etc.
The conference displayed research progress and future hot topics concerning systematic and evolutionary plant science through five plenary speeches, four invited interdisciplinary presentations, 10 youth plenary presentations, 130 session presentations, and 47 poster presentations.
To help development of the early-career researchers, the youth symposium was held. Six young researchers were awarded for outstanding oral presentations, and six others were awarded for outstanding poster presentations.
Academician Hong Deyuan called for updating evaluation mechanism of basic researches and attaching importance to scientific studies on systematic evolution.
During the sessions, a series of other activities were held, including training courses on tropical plant taxonomy, time estimation of speciation, organelle genome assembly and analysis, plant evolutionary genomics, development forum of Journal of Systematics & Evolution, etc.
The national symposium.
Prof. Chen Jin delivers an opening speech.
Participants pose a photo at XTBG.