The 4th Meeting of the 14th SSSC Council and Symposium on Soil Use, Protection and High-quality Development Held in Nanjing

From December 17 to 19, 2023, the 4th Meeting of the 14th SSSC Council and Symposium on Soil Use, Protection and High-quality Development was organized by the Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISSCAS) with a crowd of 200 representatives.

 

SSSC Vice President Prof. Xiaoyuan Yan chaired the opening ceremony and SSSC President Prof. Jiabao Zhang delivered the welcome speech in which he stated the importance of soil protection to food production improvement, green agriculture development and ecological environment protection. This was followed by the certificate ceremonies of the second group of SSSC Fellows and sixth to ninth Young Elite Scientist Sponsorship Program, and award ceremonies of the SSSC seventeenth and eighteenth Science and Technology Award and eighth Outstanding Young Scholar Award.

 

Four distinguished experts were invited to present their reports including Prof. Qirong Shen from Nanjing Agricultural University, Prof. Wei Zhou from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Zhangquan Chen from the Department of Farmland Enhancement, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and Prof. Xiaoyuan Yan, SSSC Vice President. The symposium organized a plenary session, two parallel sessions and a graduate session for soil scientists to discuss topics concerned about soil resources and management techniques, soil fertility and control mechanism, and soil environment. 

 

In addition, the 14th SSSC council members discussed a variety of business issues such as the Inter-Congress Meeting 2024 of the International Union of Soil Sciences and World Congress of Soil Science 2026 preparation, Working Group on Soil Virus establishment, and foreign member applications assessment. SSSC Vice Secretary General Dr. Weidong Yan and representatives of 25 specialty (working) committee and working groups gave a brief description of their activities in the past year and plan for the next year. Prof. Jiabao Zhang made the conclusion remarks by mentioning the society’s obvious achievements in international stage and called for more supports from council members