Editorial

The 9^th Joint Meeting of GA, ASP, AFERP, PSE, SIF & JSP was organized in Copenhagen, Denmark. The congress venue was at the Tivoli Congress Centre. As chairman of the congress and Head of Section for Natural Products and Peptides, University of Copenhagen, I was pleased to welcome so many scientists from both academia and industry dealing with medicinal plants and natural products. Scientists from 74 countries gathered in Copenhagen, and presented lectures and posters.

The main topics of the congress were:

• Advances in natural products research spurred by new technological developments

• Sources of bioactive compounds

• Sustainable sources of bioactive natural products

• Natural products as preventive and curative medicine for humans and animals

• Production and regulatory aspects of herbal preparations.

Many scientific contributions in these fields were presented. These included 7 plenary lectures, 14 keynote lectures, award lectures and 50 short lectures, as well as 890 posters being presented.

We want to thank Thieme, in particular Dr. Regina Wenzel, for accepting that the abstracts could be published in Planta Medica. It was a huge task to handle this high number of abstracts and I want to thank the editorial team, Prof Lars Porskjær Christensen and Prof Xavier Fretté, for all their efforts, as well as the local organizing committee and PhD-students and family members, who helped in editing the abstracts bringing them into a format which could be accepted for Planta Medica. All colleagues who acted on the Scientific Committee as reviewers and who actively contributed to the high scientific standard of this abstract volume are also acknowledged.

Associate Professor Anna K Jäger

Chairman of JNPC2016 Copenhagen