Feedback by CRISTINA LEONARDUZZI

I attended the IUFRO Tree Biotechnology Conference “Forests: the importance to the planet and society” that was organized in Florence from 8^th to 12^th June. I am from the Institute of Biosciences and BioResources (IBBR) - National Research Council (CNR) , Italy, and I presented a poster on the contemporary seed and pollen immigration in an altitudinal transect of silver fir (Abies alba Mill.) in a fragmented area in Central Apennines.

The conference started with the introductory and outstanding lecture by Sally Aitken (University of British Columbia, Canada), who addressed the topic of how to detect patterns of local adaptation using genomic data and correcting for neutral population structure. In the following days, there has been a succession of highly interesting talks dealing with tree genomics and climate change, biodiversity and conservation of forest ecosystems, and tree biotechnology. In particular, I really appreciated the talk by Michele Morgante (University of Udine, Italy) who focused on the evolutionary history of genomes.

In addition, during the conference breaks it was possible to have a look at the many posters presented in the poster session, to directly talk to the authors, and to meet and discuss with other scientist about the topics introduced by the presentations.

This conference was very inspiring and very useful for me and I am really grateful to EVOLTREE for providing me financial support to attend it.