HortForum

Prof. Dr. Ted DeJong, ISHS Vice-President, responsible for overseeing the scientific programs of the International Society for Horticultural Science, supports the launch of the web-based initiative called “HortForum”.

“The idea of this activity is to have webinars followed by panel discussions and open questions pertaining to the topic being presented. This initiative provides opportunities for debating the positive and negative aspects of some of the science and technology innovations that are current in our fields of horticulture research. It is my contention that many times our meetings have become a bit stale and the normal course of events is that researchers make brief presentations at meetings or even in seminars. There is sometimes a brief time for polite questions, but there is little time devoted to debate or to openly discuss what is presented. The idea of “HortForum” is to provide opportunities for members of our Society to have this type of open discussion on current topics.

I thank George Manganaris for his willingness to manage the web aspects of this project and in helping with the organization to make “HortForum” a reality. He has managed to provide an opportunity for up to 1000 members of our Society to attend these on-line meetings. If you are interested, register on a first-come, first-served basis.

I am open to receiving suggestions for future topics that would be good subjects for this format. Please email me your suggestions”

Ted DeJong
Vice-President of the ISHS Board and Chair of the ISHS Executive Committee
tmdejong@ucdavis.edu