The Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, Prof. Dr. Ezz Eldin Abu Setit and Prof. Dr. Nazmi Abdel Hamid, Vice President for Community Service and Environmental Development opened the 15th International Conference of Crop Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture at Ain Shams University. This was in the presence of Prof. Dr. Ahmed Galal, Dean of the Faculty and President of the Conference and a group of professors of agricultural faculties in various Egyptian universities.

During his inaugural speech, Abu Setit stressed the state's interest in developing agricultural crops and adopting new and modern methods in solving agricultural problems and benefiting from applicable scientific research and its exit from closed laboratories.

Pointing out the importance of holding conferences to discuss the problems facing agriculture and finding innovative solutions for them. This will only be achieved through concerted efforts between different institutions and universities.

Prof. Dr. Nazmi explained that agricultural crops are the mainstay of agriculture and food security in all countries of the world, especially in Egypt. Therefore, the State is interested in devising high quality, productive and resistant to environmental and vital conditions, thus contributing to reducing the food gap and achieving self-sufficiency, especially in strategic crops to reduce imports, provide hard currency and accelerate development.

Prof. Dr. Ahmed Galal pointed out that Egypt has limitless resources and the greatest of them lies in the minds of their scientists and young researchers, but they only require good exploitation, pointing out that Egypt is an agricultural country in the first place and that agriculture is the way to achieve economic development and food security.

Prof. Dr. Afaf Mohamed Tolba reviewed some of the topics discussed by the conference over two days representing the duration of the meeting namely: the production of field crop physiology, improvement of field crops, climate change, the future of agriculture and limited water resources after the construction of the dam.

The opening ceremony also included a documentary film about the history of the crop department, its development and potential.