From Jun. 9th to Jun. 13^th, the 8^th International Symposium on Molecular Breeding of Forage and Turf(MBFT) was held in Istanbul, Turkey. Professor Zhang Xinquan, the Deputy Dean of College of Animal Science, attended the symposium together with associate professor Huang LinKai and other members of their research group. The theme of the symposium is "modern biotechnology and grass breeding". Over 100 experts in the field of molecular breeding of forage and turf attended the symposium, coming from more than 20 countries such as America, China, Germany, Australia, Denmark and New Zealand. They had an extensive exchange and in-depth discussion on the commonly concerned issues such as biotic and abiotic stresses, bioenergy, transgene, functional genomics, plant and microbial interaction, genetic diversity of forage germplasm resources.