WORDS OF WELCOME - OPENING CEREMONY

First, I would like to welcome all the participants on behalf of the organization for having joined this 8^th Symposium of working group ‘Timing of field production in vegetable crops’, organized in agreement with the Italian Society of Horticulture (SOI). I hope you had a good journey and will have a pleasant stay in Bari (Italy).

I am very glad to see there is a wide participation from many different countries, in total from 30 countries and 4 continents. This will certainly make the sharing of our experiences most profitable. Actually, the program of the symposium is very rich with contributions and posters as you can read.

We have prepared a scientific program encouraging debate and dialogue. The number of oral papers was restricted. Particular attention and plenty of time was allocated to posters. These options introduced several limitation in the organization of the scientific program. Therefore, I apologize the participants whose contributions could not be arranged according to the author's preference.

We have also organized a trip to farms in Puglia in order to give the participants a good idea of the type of crops and cultivation techniques in our region. In particular for artichokes, which I hope you will also have a chance of tasting.

I have also been asked to give you the welcome of the Chair of the Vegetable Section of ISHS, Prof. Portas, who has not been able to join us for a commitment in Korea.

A special knowledge to the members of Organizing Committee for the cooperation I received during the preparation of the meeting.

I wish you good work and a useful stay in Bari.

Thank you.

Giovanni Damato
Convener

PREFACE

This volume of Acta Horticulturae is the proceedings of the Eight International Symposium on Timing of Field Production in Vegetable Crops.

Invited and keynote speakers and authors of offered oral papers and posters had the opportunity to submit their manuscripts for publication in this volume of the series Acta Horticulturae.

Submitted manuscripts were reviewed by the members of the Editorial Board and amended according to the referee suggestions prior to acceptance. The Editorial Board could not accept all manuscripts submitted for publication.

The ISHS acknowledges the cooperation received from the Editorial Board on reviewing the manuscripts, which was a significant contribution to the overall quality of the publication.


The ISHS Board of Directiors