Global Agriculture

CAAS to Accelerate Agricultural S&T in Next Five Years

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20 January 2021, China: The 2021 Work Conference of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) convened on Jan. 19 in Beijing. Tang Renjian, Director of the Office of the Central Leading Group for Rural Affairs and Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, attended the conference and delivered a speech.

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The conference stressed that efforts should be made to adapt to the new circumstances and demands of innovation in agricultural science and technology in China’s new development stage, accelerate the pace of innovation, and make good use of technological innovation as a key variable so as to provide strong support for all-round rural revitalization and the acceleration of modernization in agriculture and rural areas.

The conference pointed out that the following tasks should be accomplished to strengthen innovation in agricultural science and technology:

1) efforts should be made to strengthen fundamental research and the forward-looking deployment of agricultural science and technology, encourage exploration and research in the frontiers, and strive to achieve a number of major breakthroughs in original theories, laws, mechanisms, tools and methods;

2) efforts should be made to make breakthroughs in core technologies, especially those related to seeds and arable land. Attention should be concentrated to mobilize resources, pool strength, and carry out joint research to tackle bottlenecks in agricultural technologies in order to make breakthroughs as soon as possible and gain a technological edge;

3) efforts should be made to promote the in-depth industry-university-research institute integration, remove institutional barriers, deepen reforms to unleash the vitality of innovation, and solve the problem of disconnection between scientific research and industrial development;

4) efforts should be made to enhance infrastructure construction related to agricultural scientific research, actively seek support from relevant departments, build national gene banks and breeding grounds for crops, livestock, fish, and microorganisms, build a number of national agricultural science labs and data centers, and focus on long-term fundamental work so as to lay a solid foundation for the steady progress of agricultural science and technology.

Zhang Taolin, Vice Minister of MARA, attended the conference and Tang Huajun, President of CAAS, chaired the conference.

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