Training on East Africa Biodiversity and Conservation Biology  (From Dun Wang, 2011, Adaptive Evolution)

On April 6th, a visiting delegation consisted of 22 researchers from 6 countries in central and east Africa like Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zambia, Rwanda and Malawi arrived at Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences and started to receive the two-week training on fundamental skills and knowledge of biodiversity and conservation biology.

Secretary of Party Committee and Vice Director Zhiqiang Luo warmly welcomed the guests on behalf of Wuhan Botanical Garden (WBG) and proposed hope and demands on the training and collaboration with African countries. The Chinese responsible person Qingfeng, Wang from WBG organized the whole training. At first, the training class invited experts on conservation biology, invasive biology, plant genomics and proteomics to give the fundamental training on the African visitors. Then, through practice in the laboratory, they received training on fundamental skills of plant molecular biology systemically. At last, the delegation was arranged to visit Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chen Shan Shanghai Botanical Garden and Reservoir Area and Hydro-Fluctuation Area of Three Gorges and had stimulated practice training finally. During the whole training, the African visitors showed strong interest and raised lots of valuable questions on biodiversity based on biological particularity of their own countries. The Chinese experts answered their questions patiently, assisted them to analyze problems in their current scientific research and proposed some solutions. The African visitors said they had a systematic and thorough understanding on biodiversity and conservation biology through this training, which will be a perfect instruction on their future work. Also, they hope they can receive selfishless assistance from Chinese experts and scholars in the future.

As the affiliated project of “Collaboration Research on East Africa Biodiversity”, key project of International Cooperation Bureau, CAS, this training is remarkably successful and provided good foundation for further research and collaboration, which will also be very beneficial for improving the quality and effect of the whole project. Meanwhile, the effective methodology of the project set a good example for future collaboration on biodiversity between China and East Africa, even the whole African area.