On April 16, Professor Yuling Bai from Wageningen University & Research (the Netherlands), Professor Maria Ercolano from the University of Naples Federico II (Italy), and Professor Manuel Jamilena from the University of Almería (Spain) visited the Institute of Vegetables and Flowers (IVF) for academic exchange. The meeting was attended by Professor Zhang Shengping, Deputy Director of IVF; Professor Cheng Feng, Assistant to the Director; and Professor Li Lei, Director of Division of Technology Management and International Collaboration. More than 100 researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students from the institute listened to the presentations. Professor Cheng Feng, Assistant to the Director, chaired the seminar.

At the seminar, Cheng Feng extended a warm welcome to the three professors. Each professor delivered an excellent academic talk. Professor Yuling Bai, in her talk titled "Frontiers in Plant Resistance Breeding," systematically elaborated on the latest advances in plant disease resistance breeding and shared her unique insights into the mining of broad-spectrum resistance and susceptibility genes and the analysis of resistance mechanisms. Professor Maria Ercolano presented a report entitled "Accelerating Crop Breeding via Advanced Omics Analysis and Genome-Editing," detailing how multi-omics analysis and genome-editing technologies can accelerate crop breeding. Professor Manuel Jamilena, in his talk "Sequencing-Based GWAS and QTL Mapping of Fruit Quality Traits in Cucurbita pepo," reported the results of applying sequencing-based GWAS and QTL mapping to fruit quality traits in zucchini. The presentations sparked lively discussions among the audience and fostered a strong academic atmosphere.