The conference was attended by representatives from the Russian Federation, Belarus, Tajikistan, Abkhazia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, other countries and regions. The Donetsk People’s Republic was represented at this international forum by Svetlana Prikhodko, the Director of the State Institution “Donetsk Botanical Garden”, and Alexandra Nikolaeva, the head of the department of tropical and subtropical plants. The conference participants discussed a wide range of issues related to innovative approaches in fruit cultivation technology, selection, genetic and biotechnological research in gardening, advanced technologies for storage and processing of horticultural products, economic problems of gardening and ways to solve them, as well as training of specialists in fruit growing and floriculture, ornamental gardening and landscape gardening.

Donetsk scientists made a report “Collection of tropical and subtropical plants of the Donetsk Botanical Garden: the history of creation and development”, which aroused keen interest among the conference participants. In the course of communication and experience exchange, preliminary agreements were reached on the development of scientific cooperation between the Donetsk Botanical Garden and a number of leading scientific institutions of the Russian Federation. Svetlana Prikhodko, the Director of the Donetsk Botanical Garden, received an official invitation to participate in a meeting of the Council of Botanical Gardens of the South of Russia with a report on the areas of activity of the Donetsk Botanical Garden in order to consider the issue of admission to associate members of the Council of Botanical Gardens of Russia.

Within the framework of the conference, excursions were organized for the participants in the collections of the Sochi National Park, the Friendship Tree Botanical Garden, the Sukhumi Botanical Garden, and the farm of the Institute of Agriculture of the Academy of Sciences of Abkhazia. The Donetsk delegation also took part in a festive event − a grafting on the Tree of Friendship, dedicated to the 125th anniversary of the founding of the All-Russian Research Institute of Floriculture and Subtropical Crops and the 85th anniversary of the founding of the Tree of Friendship botanical garden. Under the current cooperation agreement with the All-Russian Research Institute of Floriculture and Subtropical Crops, the Donetsk Botanical Garden was given seed and planting material of subtropical crops to replenish the collection fund and introduce new interesting subtropical plants in the Donbass. The participation of employees of the Donetsk Botanical Garden in a scientific conference was supported by the NGO Russian Center.