The Australian botanical community invites you to Melbourne, Australia in July 2011 to participate in the XVIII International Botanical Congress. Australia has a vibrant scientific community active across all botanical disciplines and its researchers play a prominent and highly collaborative role in international biological sciences.

The Australian flora, with its many endemics and strong Gondwanan element provides a unique opportunity full of inspiring experiences for the botanical visitor. Its ancient landscape includes vast deserts, tropical and temperate rainforests, floristically rich heathlands and unique eucalypt forests.

Australia’s botanical community is eager to welcome international colleagues to the 2011 IBC for an intellectually stimulating and socially memorable occasion.

Judy West and Steve Hopper, Presidents

 

  
 
 

organising committee
The Organising Committee of enthusiastic and eminent members of the Australian botanical community is drawn from around Australia covering diverse botanical disciplines and representing Universities, Botanic Gardens and Herbaria, and publicly funded research organizations such as CSIRO, as well as the professional botanical, mycological and ecological societies.

The following positions and functions have been agreed upon:

Presidents
Dr Judy West, Australian National Herbarium, CSIRO, Canberra
Prof Stephen Hopper, University of Western Australia, Perth

Vice-Presidents
Dr Jeremy Burdon, CSIRO Plant Industry, Canberra
Prof Pauline Ladiges, University of Melbourne

Secretary-General
Prof Mark Burgman, University of Melbourne

Scientific Program Committee Chairperson
Dr Tim Entwisle, Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney

Steering Committee Chairperson (fund raising, sponsorship)
Prof James Reid, University of Tasmania, Hobart

Committee members
Prof Alan Baker, University of Melbourne
Prof David Bowman, Charles Darwin University, Darwin
Dr Curt Brubaker, CSIRO Plant Industry, Canberra
Prof Margaret Clayton, Monash University, Melbourne
Dr Tony Gendall, La Trobe University, Melbourne
Prof Bob Hill, Adelaide University
Dr Frank Udovicic, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne
Dr Michelle Waycott, James Cook University, Townsville
Dr Trevor Whiffin, La Trobe University, Melbourne

It is proposed to establish an International Advisory Group to assist with development of the scientific program for the Congress.

  

scientific program topics

The scientific program will accommodate all aspects of the botanical sciences, particularly the core disciplinary areas of:

  • Ecology and the environment
  • Conservation and restoration biology
  • Population biology
  • Systematics and evolutionary biology
  • Physiology and phytochemistry
  • Botanical diversity and taxonomy
  • Cell Biology
  • Molecular Genetics
  • Physiology and Functional Genomics
  • Structure and Development
  • Botanical History
  • Ethnobotany
  • Bioinformatics, biological databases, knowledge management

In addition, the scientific program will incorporate symposia that look “over the horizon”, fundamentally re-examining the way we think about how plants evolve, function, and exist in a complex and changing environment as we approach the 2011 Congress.

Further, with Australia’s position in the southern hemisphere and its gondwanic origins and consequent evolution of a unique biota, other symposia will provide opportunities to explore the diversity and evolution of Oceania and the gondwanic floras.

These more specialized symposia will include:

  • Urban plant ecology and conservation
  • Restoration ecology
  • Genes and genome evolution
  • Climate change
  • Function and development
  • Biogeography of Oceania
  • Biosecurity – invasives and invasiveness
  • The rhizosphere
  • Evolution of gondwanic floras
  • Sustainable agriculture
  • Systematics and botanical diversity in the genomics age
  • Tropical forests