From the from 6th till 11th of December in Vientiane, the National University of Laos and the National museum of Natural History, Paris have organized a conference on “Botanical research in tropical Asia”. With 63 talks, a poster session with 52 posters, an afternoon session with three keynote speakers and three workshops the conference gave the opportunity for botanists working on the flora of this region to gather together. More than 20 botanists from European botanists and numerous researchers from South East Asia as well as Japan, and India attended the conference.
From the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden(XTBG), Dr. Daniele Cicuzza from Center of Integrative Conservation and Dr. Ito Yu from Plant Phylogenetics and Conservation Group, Centre for Integrative Conservation gave two oral presentations. Daniele Cicuzza presented a talk on “Fern Diversity at the edge of Indochina” whereas Yu Ito on “Phylogeny of Najas L. revisited (Hydrocharitaceae) implication for taxonomy, biogeography and polyploidy evolution”.
The conference aim was to bring botanists who are working on the area of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam and to highlight the state of the art for the Flora of Cambodia Laos and Vietnam. The Flora committee intend to increase the speed of publication of plant families in the next years and to conclude the flora in a reasonable period of time. This require to create a closer collaboration among botanists from Cambodia Laos and Vietnam, research Institutes of neighbor countries and at the same time institution with a long history on research in this area.
Cambodia Laos and Vietnam are three countries where population and economy is growing very fast with subsequent destruction of natural resources. Knowledge of the flora is a crucial step to prioritize areas where biodiversity is particularly high and require urgent protection and reduce the level of destruction. In the conference importance of Botanic Garden and easy access to Herbarium collection was also addressed. It was presentation the development of the first Botanical Garden in Laos, the Pha Tad Ke Botanical Garden in Luang Prabang and the new way to the complete digitalized herbarium in Paris.