On May 20-22, 2019, the IAWA-IUFRO International Symposium on Challenges and Opportunities for Updating Wood Identification was held in China. The symposium was very successful, which was co-organized by the Research Institute of Wood Industry (CRIWI), Chinese Academy of Forestry (CAF) and US Forest Products Laboratory (FPL). The meeting had 4 invited keynote lectures, 25 oral presentations belonging to 6 technical sessions, and poster presentations. There were 90 participants from 11 countries registered for the meeting, of which 30 participants were from abroad of China. Gerald Koch from Thünen Institute of Wood Research gave a keynote lecture on “Wood anatomy - The role of macroscopic and microscopic wood identification to combat illegal logging and trading” and introduced interesting wood identification databases called “ThmacroHOLZdata” and “CITESwoodID”. Soon Leong Lee from Forest Research Institute Malaysia gave a keynote lecture on “Application of DNA forensic technology developed by forest research institute Malaysia (FRIM) for timber tracking” from case studies, Michael Wiemann from Forest Products Laboratory gave an introduction on “Wood Anatomy Research of the USDA Forest Products Laboratory” and Yafang Yin from Research Institute of Wood Industry, Chinese Academy of Forestry gave a keynote lecture on “The challenge of wood identification in China: from traditional anatomy to new auxiliary methods”, introducing different cutting-edge wood identification techniques. Oral presentations and posters focused on recent advances on wood image analysis and database establishment, DNA barcoding techniques, chemical fingerprint techniques as well as policy implementation. The symposium also included issues on to combat with illegal logging, new techniques of wood identification, global timber tracking techniques.

On May 23, 2019, GTTN (Global Timber Tracking Network) with IAWA together successively organized an Asian Workshop of GTTN-IAWA Application on timber tracking network at the same venue as the IAWA-IUFRO Symposium.