From Plant Press, Vol. 22, No. 1, January 2019.
The Department of Botany and the United States Botanic Garden will convene the 2019 Smithsonian Botanical Symposium, “What Darwin Couldn't Know: Modern Perspectives on Crop Plant Origins,” to be held at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., on May 17, 2019.
Darwin was not only interested in Galapagos finches, but he also spent a considerable amount of time experimenting and thinking about domestication of animals and plants. He took a dim view of progress in understanding domestication in the vegetable kingdom and wrote, “Botanists have generally neglected cultivated varieties, as beneath their notice” (The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, 1868). This is no longer the case. There is a resurgence of research focused on the plants most essential to human life.
The 17th Smithsonian Botanical Symposium will highlight current research into the domestication of crops and their wild relatives as well as ornamental plants. Speakers will include archaeobotanists, botanists, geneticists, and paleoethnobotanists utilizing molecular and genomic tools unknown to Darwin.
A full lineup of speakers will present their talks during the day at the National Museum of Natural History’s Baird Auditorium. The event will be followed by a reception and poster session at the U.S. Botanic Garden that evening.
In addition, the 17th José Cuatrecasas Medal in Tropical Botany will be awarded at the Symposium. This prestigious award is presented annually to an international scholar who has contributed significantly to advancing the field of tropical botany. The award is named in honor of Dr. José Cuatrecasas, a pioneering botanist who spent many years working in the Department of Botany at the Smithsonian and devoted his career to plant exploration in tropical South America.
Abstracts for poster presentations may be emailed to sbs@si.edu. Topic must be related to the study of plant domestication and contain original research. The deadline for abstract submission is April 12, 2019. Abstract submissions should include the following: Author(s) name(s) including affiliation(s) and email address(es); list the title in sentence case; titles are limited to 150 characters; abstracts may not exceed 1,500 characters including spaces. Posters should be no larger than 30" x 40" (portrait orientation). Presenting authors are required to attend the poster session (6:30 pm – 8:30 pm) to take advantage of opportunities to discuss their work with symposium participants.
There is no registration fee to attend the symposium or reception, but attendees must register online at http://sbs19.eventbrite.com/. Email sbs@si.edu for more information.
Editor’s note: The original title of the symposium, “Beneath their Notice: Domestication of Useful Plants” has officially been changed to “What Darwin Couldn't Know: Modern Perspectives on Crop Plant Origins.”
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