Inaugural Editorial

Tropical plants in the world include 2/3 of higher plant species, covering a large number of cash crops and their wild relatives. They have extremely rich genetic diversities and provide humans with food and beverages, energy, medicine, wood, fuel, various industrial raw materials, etc.. They also provide necessary oxygen, water, living environment for other animals and plants, having irreplaceable functions on the health of the ecosystem. Due to the fragility of tropical forest ecosystems caused by human activities, it is necessary and urgent to protect the rare and endangered tropical plants and their habitats.

Because the tropical regions are mostly developing countries, researches on tropical plants have long been focused on raising the cash crops and improving their values, and on maintaining the tropical ecosystem sustainability. For a long time, basic research on tropical plants has lagged far behind that on other cash or ecological plants. The development of omics and modern biotechnologies in the last decades have accelerated tropical plant research with more, and high-quality research papers. At the same time, the economic development in tropical developing countries has also fueled more resources for tropical crop research.

To further advance the basic science in tropical plants, we are pleased to launch Tropical Plants, an international academic journal that will be strictly peer-reviewed, and published in open-access mood to allow for fast communication in research findings, and academic exchange of knowledge and innovative technologies, academic discussion on issues arising in tropical plant research and interdisciplinary research.

Our goal is to build Tropical Plants into a leading journal in this specialized area. Tropical Plants will publish original research papers, short communications, letters to the editor, opinions, data articles, and tools and methods articles to meet the community need. The journal will cover a wide range of subject areas: (1) multi-omics research, including genome and population genome research, transcriptome, metabolome, phenome, etc.; (2) biochemistry, molecular biology of tropical plant growth and development; (3) ecological and evolutionary biology; (4) genetics, breeding, and plant trait formation; (5) plant physiology and interactions with environment and biological organisms; (6) other broadly-applicable methodology, data, protocols.

Tropical Plants has assembled a high-quality professional editorial board to provide authors and readers with the best publishing and reading experiences. For authors, all submitted articles will be reviewed timely, anonymously, and rigorously. All accepted articles will be published online shortly after acceptance for fast dissemination. All rejected articles will be provided with professional constructive comments. For readers, all published papers will be freely available for read, download, and reuse of the information for education. We will also hold conferences, symposia and workshops for pre- and post-publication exchanges, training, and network opportunities for researchers and students in tropical plants community.

Finally, we thank the publisher, Maximum Academic Press (www.maxapress.com) to work with us in this endeavor, and sincerely invite all colleagues engaged in tropical plant research to join us to build this academic highland, offer your suggestions, submit your manuscripts, review the manuscripts, read and spread the scientific findings. With the joint efforts of the journal office, editors, the authors, the readers, and publisher, Tropical Plants will become a high-impact, high-profile global academic exchange platform for tropical plants community.