XIM4 meeting report, Sept. 25-27 2019, Padua (Italy)

The fourth edition of the international xylem meeting was held for the first time outside France. This represents an important step forward for the meeting and attests to the resolutely international dimension of this symposium. The conference was organized by the University of Padua in the green setting of the botanical garden. No less than 140 researchers from more than 21 countries attended these three intense days of seminars and discussions. For logistical reasons, the number of places had been limited by the organizers, which forced us to decline a number of registrations. This tends to prove, if there was any need, that the community of researchers in xylem physiology and plant hydraulic functioning is booming, and that these meetings are becoming an essential biennial event for our discipline. For this edition, no less than a hundred communications were presented, including about fifty plenary talks. It is difficult to summarize all the richness of this work in a few lines, so we propose here to highlight some of the most salient points.