Han Ximin

ximhan@126.com

THE seven-day XIX International Botanical Congress (IBC) closed Saturday with the adoption of the Shenzhen Declaration on safeguarding plant diversity and other resolutions.

At the closing ceremony, Hong Deyuan, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, won the Engler Medal in Gold and Peter Raven, an American botanist and a president emeritus with the Missouri Botanical Garden, won the Shenzhen International Award in Plant Sciences 2017.

The Engler Medal in Gold is awarded every six years for outstanding lifetime contributions to plant taxonomy and has been presented at each International Botanical Congress since 1987. The Shenzhen International Award in Plant Sciences was initiated by the organizing committee of IBC 2017. The purpose of the Shenzhen award is to promote the development of the plant sciences and the implementation of the seven priorities of the Shenzhen Declaration on Plant Sciences. The award consists of a trophy, a certificate and monetary prize of 700,000 yuan (US$103,880).

The Tech and Ecology Foundation, which is funded by Shenzhen Tech and Ecology and Environment Co. Ltd., provides financial support for the award.

Besides the two top awards, 284 scholars and 208 students from 64 countries and regions won prizes totaling 2.3 million yuan for their contributions to the plant sciences, with 52 percent of the winners coming from developing countries.

The Congress passed the Shenzhen Declaration on Plant Sciences as a call for action and prioritization toward enhancing support for the plant sciences in achieving global sustainability, working together across disciplines and cultures to address common goals and developing and utilizing new technologies and big data platforms to increase the exploration and understanding of nature.

The Congress decided to establish an IAPT-China office through cooperation with the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) and the Botanical Society of China.

The Congress also decided that the next IBC will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2023, under the auspices of the Botanical Society of Brazil.

IBC 2017 was unprecedented, with a record total of 6,850 experts and scholars and 117 exhibitors attending the Congress. The organizers offered five public lectures, 12 plenary lectures, 34 keynote lectures, 49 training lectures and 212 symposia around a wide array of plant-related topics.

This scale and scope of academic lecturers has rarely been seen in the history of the IBC.

During the botanical congress, 2,924 delegates were introduced to the city through various ecological and science-themed trips.