Alone, we can do little, so little, together we can do so much. -- Helen Keller

Highly aware of the importance of collaboration and communication, we actively participated in several communication programs, in the hope of hearing the voice of stakeholders and other iGEMers as well as making ourselves heard.

The Conference of China iGEMer Community (CCiC) is a national conference initiated by Chinese iGEM teams, aiming to provide a platform for iGEM teams and young synthetic biology enthusiasts in China to share resources and promote mutual learning and communication.

At CCiC, the ZJU-China team presented the Flora Sentinel project, which attracted many other teams. After our presentation, many teams asked questions. For example, "How to balance the relationship between guaranteed yield and enhanced immunity?" "How can interchangeability be achieved in plant vaccines?" These questions inspired us a lot, and we improved our project by reading articles and consulting experts for these questions, as you can see on our ihp page.

At CCiC, we actively communicated with professors in the synthetic biology direction about synthetic biology issues. At the lecture of Prof. Wang Baojun, we had a deeper understanding of the research on the frontiers of synthetic biology. At the same time, we realized the importance of improving the synthetic biology program with the practical needs of the society. In the later Human Practice, we focus on researching the real world pesticide needs and combining them with the possibilities in scientific research, striving to make our project design more effective and refined.

On August 5th, we were invited to participate in the "Approaching Synthetic Biology - 2023iGEM Exchange", attended by BIO+SHANGHAI, BIO+CHINA, OTIA HANGZHOU, ZJUT-China and ZJU-China. The representatives of each team made a detailed introduction and presentation of the research projects of their teams this year. After the presentation, the students and teachers of other teams put forward questions and suggestions. We also exchanged experiments and preparation experiences before and after the meeting. Please Approaching Synthetic Biology - 2023iGEM Exchange for detailed information.

We had several exchanges with the team from Shenzhen University, which is also doing plant diseases, at several conferences, such as South China Exchange, CCiC and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Synthetic Biology Exchange, and we shared our project inspirations with each other. We shared our experiences on topics such as plant immunization, disease prevention and control, and treatment. After the meeting, we also established frequent contact and exchanged ideas on team affairs and competitions.