Youth Working Committee, IPP, held successfully the 1st and the 2nd Youth Forum for Plant Protection in 2016 on 16-17 June, 2016. Dr. LI Hui, the Associate Professor of the Department of Environment and Soil Chemistry, Michigan State University (MSU), USA, and Prof. ZHANG Xiaoming from the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), was invited to speak at the 1st Youth Forum for Plant Protection in 2016. The 2nd Youth Forum for Plant Protection in 2016 invited Prof. YAN Jianbing from Huazhong Agricultural University to present. Deputy Director General ZHANG Jie and more than 100 scientists and students who work in the related areas attended the forums. Prof. LIU Xingang, the Director of Youth Working Committee and Prof. LIU Wende, the Deputy Director of the Committee jointly hosted the Forums.

The topic of Prof. LI was Pharmaceutical Uptake, Translocation and Metabolism in Vegetable from Water. Dr. LI took antibiotics, the most common substrates, as materials to study the interactions between environmental chemical compounds and absorption of plants by using techniques of adsorption kinetics and biological transfer and explained the transport mechanisms of chemical compounds in plants. Dr. ZHANG spoke on Mechanism of AGO2-mediated plant resistance. He introduced systematically the species of small RNAs in plants and the pathway of generation, and the components and functions of AGO gene family. He elaborated also the molecular mechanisms of AGO2-mediated plant resistance against bacterial diseases. Prof. YAN Jianbing spoke on Genetic analysis of complex quantitative traits and the application. He took maize as the research material and talked how he deployed the methods of genomics, esp. the genome-wide association study (GWAS), to analyze and regulate the quantitative traits, such as oil production and yield, in maize. He explained also the use of molecular marker assisted breeding to improve the oil production and yield of maize. The three presentations brought about new perspectives, new theories and new ideas. The participants of the Forums actively discussed the commonly interested issues and exchanged ideas with the three speakers.

After the Forums, the three professors exchanged further with the scientists working in the groups of Cereal Fungal Diseases, Insect Functional Genomics, Pesticide Residue and Environmental Fate and Plant Disease Resistance and Functional Genomics and discussed the direction of collaboration in future. The Forums laid solid foundation for later research collaboration.