Dear IUFRO 2.09.02 and Division 2 Colleagues and Friends,

We are absolutely delighted to announce that the Proceedings of our 6th International Conference in Rotorua (March 2024) are now finalised and released! As mentioned in the Foreword, reaching this milestone has been a long and challenging journey, taking over two years instead of our usual one. Thank you for your patience, and we hope you will take great pleasure in reading this volume. Seeing this work finally come to fruition brings us immense satisfaction J.

A huge thank you to all the authors of the thirty or so contributions, which include full articles, extended abstracts, and short abstracts. We hope that this permanent publication, now carrying an ISBN, will best highlight the work you presented in Rotorua. The Proceedings will soon be permanently available on the IUFRO 2.09.02 webpage (link) once the web moderators process our request.

In the meantime, you can download the full PDF document via this secure temporary INRAE link until 20 August 2026.

This achievement would simply not have been possible without an extraordinary collective effort. We would like to extend our deepest gratitude to the highly professional team who made these Proceedings a reality: Alison Slade (Forest Growers Research), Ruth Falshaw (Mahana Editing Services), and Nick Lambert (Scion/BSI) for their outstanding and highly motivated work on English corrections, layout, design, and securing the ISBN. We also take this opportunity to thank again Henri Baillères (General Manager, Forests to Timber Products at Scion/BSI), who was instrumental as a member of the Organising Committee in mobilising the Scion teams to so warmly welcome us in New Zealand.

Furthermore, we extend our heartfelt thanks to our fellow Editorial Committee members—Paloma, Sandra & Sandra, Jorge, and Hailong. Although distance and various constraints limited the participation of some during this specific edition, their unwavering support and the collegiate and friendly spirit we share remain the bedrock of our Working Party.

For the two of us, these Proceedings also symbolise a long-standing friendship and collaboration that began in the early days of the IUFRO 2.09.02 Working Party. From the organisation of the Brno 2012 conference to the unforgettable hospitality and flawless moral and technical support Jana and her wonderful team provided in Rotorua for local arrangements, our shared journey has been a true privilege.

As we celebrate this milestone for our community, we must also look to the immediate future. We strongly encourage you to participate in the 7th IUFRO 2.09.02 Conference, which will be hosted by the Northeast Forestry University in wonderful Harbin, China, from 22 to 28 August 2026 (follow this IUFRO link to find more information, or visit the conference website directly). The theme, "Bottleneck breakthrough for tree somatic embryogenesis and other vegetative propagation in the era of omics and nanotechnology", promises to be fascinating. Please note that the deadline for abstract submission and early bird registration is 30 July 2026. Let us all support our colleague Pr. Hailong Shen, who has worked tirelessly to bring us to Harbin after our initial 2020 plans were unfortunately thwarted by the pandemic.

Finally, we would like to wish the very best to the excellent new Coordination Team (Paloma, Jorge, Junhui) and to all of you as strong supporters of the IUFRO 2.09.02 community. May we continue to champion excellent R&D and impactful Innovation in the vegetative propagation of trees within this wonderful IUFRO framework, serving the preservation and sustainable management of our vital forest socio-ecosystems.

With our warmest regards,

Jana & Jean-François

On behalf of the Editorial Committee of the Rotorua 2024 Proceedings

IUFRO 2.09.02 Working Party

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On a personal note from Jean-François:

These Proceedings mark my very last official action for the Working Party after stepping down as Coordinator in June 2024. Regretfully, I will not be able to join you in Harbin. I will be taking some much-needed time off with my family this August to rest and recharge, before devoting my full energy to the development of the IN-SYLVA Europe Research Infrastructure (RI). It is an ambitious initiative dedicated to forest ecosystem adaptation to global change (europe.in-sylva.com), which has just been accepted onto the ESFRI roadmap, the European landscape of large RIs. The development of IN-SYLVA Europe is already supported by 50 organisations from 22 countries, including IUFRO, which is part of the Consortium and will facilitate internationalisation beyond Europe.

Although I will deeply miss seeing so many long-time friends at a IUFRO 2.09.02 event for the very first time, I am confident that the development of IN-SYLVA Europe—ultimately a permanent infrastructure offering field experimentation-related services to forest researchers and stakeholders worldwide)—will provide us with wonderful new opportunities to cross paths J. Of course, I am ensuring that tree reproduction, and vegetative propagation technologies in particular, feature prominently in our IN-SYLVA Europe development plan!