From May 19th to 21st, 2023, the first Wild Vegetable Festival was held in Hegang City, Heilongjiang Province. The event was organized by project members of the National Key R&D Program "Northeast China's Forest Ecological Product Supply Capacity Improvement and Technical Demonstration".

The opening ceremony of the event was presided over by YU Jinghua, deputy chief scientist of the Key R&D Program, principal investigator of the project "R&D and Demonstration of Green Production Processing of Material Ecological Products", vice chairman of Northeast China's Wild Vegetable Industry Innovation Association, and researcher of the Urban Forest Research Team of the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE), Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The leaders from Hegang Science and Technology Association, Hegang Forestry and Grassland Bureau, Hegang Science and Technology Bureau, Hegang Agriculture and Rural Bureau, and CAPD's (China Association for Promoting Democracy) Hegang Municipal Committee participated in the event.

Nearly 100 people, including forest farmers and representatives from forestry enterprises, participated in a technical training on wild vegetable industry, which was organized also by the scientists of the Key R&D Program.