From July 21 to 27, 2024, the 20th International Botanical Congress (IBC) took place in Madrid, Spain (https://ibcmadrid2024.com/). The IBC is a conference with a long tradition, organized every six years under the supervision of the International Association for Botanical and Mycological Societies (IABMS). The IBC in Madrid was organized by the Spanish Botanical Society (Sociedad Botánica Española) and the Royal Botanical Garden (Real Jardín Botánico). As usual for this significant international event, it covered a wide range of topics in botanical and mycological research and was attended by more than 3,000 participants from all over the world. The IBC included plenary lectures given by outstanding personalities in the field of botany, as well as almost 200 symposia, workshops and satellite meetings dealing with various topics. As this was the first IBC held ever in the area of the European Mediterranean, one of the major biodiversity hotspots in the world, several symposia focused on plant systematics and evolution in the Mediterranean regions. Other symposia, for instance, were devoted to specific taxonomic groups (such as families) or dealt with current hot topics in plant research such as recent advances in phylogenomics, biodiversity conservation, the impact of climate change, or citizen science initiatives. Overall, this event provided an invaluable opportunity to share research, knowledge and experience with colleagues from around the world through the talks, poster presentations, as well as informal discussions. The Institute of Botany of the PSBC SAS was represented here by four participants who delivered a total of nine contributions (talks or posters) in co-authorship with other PSBC SAS researchers as well as foreign researchers as part of ongoing international collaborations.
In the week preceding the botanical congress, the traditional Nomenclature Section of the congress is held. The aim of this five-day session was to prepare a revised version of the rules for creating scientific names for fungi, plants, and algae, known as the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants. Currently, when describing a new species, authors must designate a so-called type herbarium specimen, which allows for the unambiguous interpretation of the name and is stored in a publicly accessible collection. In the Nomenclature Section of the congress, there was a discussion about whether this specimen could, in some cases, be replaced by a DNA sequence. A decision on this matter was postponed to the next congress. The scientific community also observed how the Nomenclature Section would address plant names that offend certain groups of people. The International Code will include rules that will prevent the publication of such names in the future. The epithet (the species name) or its part that includes the words caf[e]r- and caff[e]r-, which are perceived as explicitly offensive in some African countries, will be replaced with the word afr- in approximately 300 names of fungi, algae, and plants, which is appropriate given that all these species occur in Africa.
The presentations of Judita Zozomová (oral presentation) and Marek Šlenker (poster) were supported by the EU NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Slovakia under the project No. 09I03-03-V04-00489 (to J.Z.) and No. 09I03-03-V04-00494 (to M.Š.)
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Text: Judita Zozomová, Karol Marhold, Adam Kantor
Photo: Adam Kantor