The 1st Symposium of Society for Tropical Root and Tuber Crops & the 6th National Workshop on Cassava Biotechnology and Functional Genomics, organized by Institute of Plant Physiology & Ecology, SIBS and Tropical Crops Genetic Resources Institute, CATAS, was successfully held in Sanya, Hainan, from Oct 25 to 28, 2012. More than 140 participants from different research institutes and universities attended the event.

Yan Peng, Head of South Asia Regional Office, the Ministry of Agriculture and Feijie Lv, Director General of China Society of Tropical Crops attended the meeting and addressed the importance and problem related to sustainable Agriculture and industrialization of root and tuber crops. The workshop also invited scientists, including members from the Sweetpotato Agricultural Research System and Cassava Agricultural Research System, for keynote speeches.

Young researchers also presented their recent progresses on tropical root and tuber crops, covering the topics of functional genomics and proteomics, tissue culture and genetic transformation, discovery and functional verification of important genes and improvement of important economic traits, respectively. The meeting promoted the exchange and cooperation among societies of root and tuber crops and various research groups.

The meeting was jointly supported by Society of Tropical Root and Tuber Crops and Chinese Society of Plant Biology. Prof. Peng Zhang accompanied by Dr. Jun Yang, Hongxia Wang, Jia Xu, Wenzhi Zhou and Zhanfei Cui attended the event.