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Tropical research garden propers

By Chen Liang (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-07 11:12

The 4-day symposium highlighted recent research in the ginger family plants and provided the venue for researchers to meet and discuss their work. It included oral presentations, group discussion and a poster competition, covering such diverse fields as taxonomy and systematics, molecular studies and phylogeny, phytochemistry and pharmacognosy, biodiversity and conservation, horticulture and hybridization and all aspects of their biology. Participants presented 95 abstracts of their work.

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Besides Chen Jin, the academic committee was composed of such leading biologists as W. John Kress from Smithsonian Institution, US, Mark Newman from Royal Botanic Garden, UK, Day Baker from Harold L. Lyon Arboretum, US, Wu Telin from South China Botanical Garden, Jana Skornickova from Singapore Botanical Garden, Mamiyil Sabu from University of Calicut, India and Piyakaset Suksathan from Queen Sirikit Botanic Garden, Thailand.

After the meeting, W. John Kress said a journal about the recent works of the ginger family research will be published later this year.

According to Chen Jin, the symposium is only a part of the institute's celebration of its 50th anniversary. Since its founding in 1959, XTBG has evolved into a comprehensive research institution engaged in biodiversity conservation and sustainable uses of plant resources, focusing on forest ecosystem ecology, conservation biology and resource plant development. It has developed good cooperative relationships with over 100 institutions including botanic gardens, universities or institutes in more than 50 countries and regions. In recent years, it successfully organized and hosted a series of important international conferences. More than 10 well-known experts and scholars in the world have been invited to be honorary professors of the garden.

At present, the botanic garden has 300 staff members, including 164 scientific researchers and technical personnel. There are 47 senior researchers, including eight from US, UK, Canada, Netherlands and Malaysia, 200 postgraduate students and postdoctoral or visiting scientists.

"Xishaungbanna Tropical Botanical Garden has been committed to plant germplasm conservation for 50 years, and we will continue to serve as a venue for international conferences and hope bringing together more scholars from all over the world for intellectual exchange," Chen Jin says.

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