Invited by our Chinese collaborators, Hackett Professor Kadambot Siddique and Dr Yinglong Chen made a fruitful visit to China Agricultural University (CAU), Northwest A&F University (NWAFU), and Shenyang Agricultural University (SYAU) in May.
The visit to the three agricultural universities involved meetings with senior leaders at both university and college levels, and staff and students in agricultural research, delivering lectures, and inspections of experimental trials and research stations. Professor Siddique was appointed as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at SYAU and NWAFU, and received the Professorships from the Presidents of both universities. At CAU, Professor Fusuo Zhang and Professor Jianbo Shen are leading a national initiative in green agriculture development. They welcomed the support from UWA to the project via strengthening bi-lateral collaborations, and interactions with other universities in the west China, such as NWAFU and Lanzhou University, in particular.
NWAFU appointed Professor Siddique to serve as the Chair of the international academy committee on its “111” project. Dr Chen has an on-going collaborative project funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (“100 Talent” program since 2014) and National Science Foundation of China based at the Institute of Soil and Water Conservation (also under the roof of NWAFU). To date, more than 90 joint journal articles have been published by NWAFU and UWA researchers. Recently a Special Issue in the international journal Plant and Soil (June 2019) was published based on joint International Symposium on Crop Roots and Rhizosphere Interaction (9−13 October, 2017, Yangling) organised by NWAFU and UWA.
UWA has extended the existing Memorandum of Agreement (MoU) with CAU and NWAFU, and a new MoU with SYAU is currently being signed. Collaborative activities between UWA and the Chinese agricultural universities are increasing in recent years, including bi-lateral visits of academic staff and research students. There are common interests in a broad area in agricultural science, from crop physiology, agronomy, genetic and breeding, animal production to land and water management, and climate changes between UWA and the above three universities.