University contributing to food security

Crop sci­ence dis­cip­line becomes a lead­ing force in rural research nation­wide

How do plants sense and adapt to com­plex envir­on­mental cues? In August, a team led by pro­fess­ors Chu Cheng­cai and Hu Bin from the Col­lege of Agri­cul­ture at South China Agri­cul­tural Uni­versity reached a mile­stone.

Their paper, titled "NRT1.1B acts as an abscisic acid receptor in integ­rat­ing com­pound envir­on­mental cues for plants", was pub­lished in the journal Cell. This study exem­pli­fies the uni­versity's recent advance­ments in crop sci­ence.

Rooted in the fer­tile lands of South China, the crop sci­ence dis­cip­line at SCAU has thrived for over a cen­tury. Since its inclu­sion in 2022 in China's Double First-Class Ini­ti­at­ive — a gov­ern­ment pro­gram designed to enhance the coun­try's higher edu­ca­tion — the dis­cip­line has exper­i­enced rapid growth, solid­i­fy­ing its place as a lead­ing force in agri­cul­tural research and edu­ca­tion in the coun­try.

Through strenu­ous efforts, SCAU has advanced the dis­cip­line to a lead­ing pos­i­tion nation­wide, par­tic­u­larly in crops spe­cific to South China, accord­ing to Xue Hong­wei, pres­id­ent of the uni­versity, loc­ated in Guang­zhou, the cap­ital of South China's Guang­dong province.

Since its inclu­sion in the ini­ti­at­ive, the crop sci­ence dis­cip­line has expan­ded its tal­ent base, wel­com­ing 12 new national-level experts, 12 pro­vin­cial-level schol­ars and more than 40 young research­ers. Three fac­ulty mem­bers have been recog­nized as highly cited research­ers glob­ally, and three have been recog­nized as highly cited research­ers nation­ally.

The dis­cip­line has garnered firstand second-place prizes in the National Teach­ing Innov­a­tion Con­test for Col­lege Teach­ers and has two teach­ing teams recog­nized at the pro­vin­cial level for their teach­ing cap­ab­il­it­ies.

Pres­id­ent Xue said the crop sci­ence dis­cip­line is the leg­acy of agri­cul­tural pion­eers such as Ding Ying, the "father of Chinese rice-farm­ing sci­ence", and aca­dem­i­cians Lu Yong­gen and Liu Yao­guang. They are known for their ded­ic­a­tion to agri­cul­ture and ser­vice to the nation. Their stor­ies con­tinue to inspire today's edu­cat­ors and stu­dents.

Fac­ulty mem­bers spe­cial­iz­ing in rice devel­op­ment and genetic engin­eer­ing at SCAU have been recog­nized as a Huang Danian-style teach­ing team. It is named after the late geo­phys­i­cist who returned to China after study­ing and work­ing abroad for nearly two dec­ades and set an example for a new gen­er­a­tion of Chinese sci­ent­ists.

The crop sci­ence dis­cip­line has also fostered a New Agri­cul­ture Innov­a­tion Class that breaks tra­di­tional bound­ar­ies in aca­demic train­ing, provid­ing seam­less under­gradu­ate-to-doc­toral path­ways for stu­dents ded­ic­ated to agri­cul­tural sci­ence.

The res­ults of these efforts speak for them­selves: stu­dents of the dis­cip­line have clinched top accol­ades in aca­demic and sci­ence com­pet­i­tions. These include three sil­ver prizes at the China Inter­na­tional Col­lege Stu­dents' Innov­a­tion Com­pet­i­tion and the Grand Prize in the "Chal­lenge Cup" National Col­lege Stu­dents' Extra­cur­ricular Aca­demic Sci­ence and Tech­no­logy Com­pet­i­tion (Guang­dong). The fac­ulty mem­bers' achieve­ments are equally impress­ive, hav­ing garnered top hon­ors at national and pro­vin­cial con­tests.

SCAU's crop sci­ence dis­cip­line is address­ing crit­ical national chal­lenges such as food secur­ity and rural vital­iz­a­tion. With sup­port from newly estab­lished State- and pro­vin­cial-level labor­at­or­ies, the dis­cip­line has formed inter­dis­cip­lin­ary teams that tackle large-scale national projects while also fos­ter­ing ori­ginal, focused research.

Over the last five years, more than 390 new research projects have been ini­ti­ated, with the value of con­tracts increas­ing over six­fold to more than 390 mil­lion yuan ($55.6 mil­lion). Import­ant find­ings have been pub­lished in lead­ing journ­als, includ­ing Cell, Nature Genet­ics, Nature Plants and Nature Com­mu­nic­a­tions.

Thanks to the grow­ing strength of the crop sci­ence dis­cip­line, the uni­versity's plant and animal sci­ence dis­cip­line con­tin­ues to rank among the top 0.1 per­cent glob­ally in the Essen­tial Sci­ence Indic­at­ors. Its agri­cul­tural sci­ence dis­cip­line has newly entered the top 0.1 per­cent in the ESI.

SCAU ranks 21st in the latest US News & World Report global rank­ings for the best uni­versit­ies in agri­cul­tural sci­ences. In the most recent QS World Uni­versity Rank­ings by Sub­ject, its agri­cul­ture and forestry dis­cip­line is ranked 28th.

Mean­while, in Shang­haiR­ank­ing's 2024 Global Rank­ing of Aca­demic Sub­jects, its agri­cul­tural sci­ences dis­cip­line is ranked 18th. Addi­tion­ally, the crop sci­ence dis­cip­line is ranked sixth in Shang­haiR­ank­ing's 2024 Best Chinese Sub­jects Rank­ings.

SCAU's influ­ence extends far bey­ond the­or­et­ical research. Fac­ulty mem­bers are bring­ing advanced agri­cul­tural prac­tices dir­ectly to rural com­munit­ies. The crop sci­ence dis­cip­line has applied 23 new vari­et­ies and tech­no­lo­gies, includ­ing pat­en­ted out­comes, across 1 mil­lion hec­tares of farm­land.

Agri­cul­tural tech­no­logy ser­vice sta­tions named after crop sci­ence pion­eer Lu, namely Yong­gen SciTech Sta­tions, have been set up in cooper­a­tion with local gov­ern­ments, enter­prises and social organ­iz­a­tions, both domest­ic­ally and inter­na­tion­ally. These sta­tions have pro­moted cul­tiv­a­tion tech­niques for new vari­et­ies of fra­grant rice and soy­bean, driv­ing the mod­ern­iz­a­tion of agri­cul­ture.

New vari­et­ies, such as space-bred Simiao rice and Simiao fra­grant rice, have set yield records in places such as the cit­ies of Hey­uan and Shen­zhen in Guang­dong province. With a cumu­lat­ive plant­ing area of nearly 6.67 mil­lion hec­tares, these new vari­et­ies have helped farm­ers increase their income by over 20 bil­lion yuan.

The drought-res­ist­ant rice, which con­serves water and fer­til­izer, has been tested annu­ally on 2,000 hec­tares of farm­land, provid­ing pre­lim­in­ary solu­tions for the reclam­a­tion and replant­ing of mar­ginal soils, such as aban­doned and newly cul­tiv­ated lands, in South China.

In the future, it is hoped that this tech­no­logy will help add 6.67 mil­lion hec­tares of rice fields nation­wide and reduce annual water use by 20 bil­lion met­ric tons.

The Huaxia series of soy­bean vari­et­ies have been planted in an area of more than 66,700 hec­tares, bring­ing the vis­ion of "north soy­beans mov­ing south" closer to real­iz­a­tion.

Over the past five years, more than 10,000 grass­roots agri­cul­tural per­son­nel have been trained, cre­at­ing a col­lab­or­at­ive net­work that integ­rates uni­versit­ies, gov­ern­ments, enter­prises and farm­ers.

From a sig­ni­fic­ant increase in research fund­ing to the trans­form­a­tion of labor­at­ory research into pro­ductiv­ity in the fields, every step in crop sci­ence's devel­op­ment aligns with national pri­or­it­ies.

By turn­ing labor­at­ory dis­cov­er­ies into prac­tical solu­tions, SCAU's crop sci­ence dis­cip­line will con­tinue nur­tur­ing top tal­ent and con­trib­ut­ing to the nation's food secur­ity.