During President Xi Jinping’s state visit to France in 24-28 March, Dr. Tang Huajun, member of the MARA Party Leadership Group and CAAS President led a delegation to the INRA (Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique) to promote all-round science and technology cooperation with INRA. Dr. Liu Chunming, Director General of the Institute of Crop Sciences, Dr. Zhou Xueping, Director General of the Institute of Plant Protection and Dr. Zhang Huijie, Deputy Director General of the Department of International Cooperation accompanied with the visit.

In the headquarters of INRA, Dr. Tang Huajun had an in-depth exchange of views with Dr. Philippe Mauguin, President of INRA. Both sides fully recognized positive progress made in key areas of cooperation, including plant protection, wheat genome, agricultural ecology and climate change and decided to improve channels and levels of cooperation and expand and deepen cooperation in smart agriculture, prevention and control of transboundary animal and plant diseases and biodiversity. The delegation also visited the Versailles Campus of INRA.

During the visit, Dr. Tang Huajun and Dr. Philippe Mauguin jointly signed the CAAS-INRA International Associated Laboratory for Plant Protection and the CAAS -INRA International Associated Laboratory Of Wheat Genomics & Breeding.

CAAS attaches great importance to cooperation on agricultural science and technology with France; CAAS and INRA are each other’s partners of strategic cooperation and have made fruitful achievements in human health, environment science and climate change. In particular, in May 2018, both sides jointly organized the First CAAS-INRA Agricultural Scientists Seminar; in December 2018, both sides signed the Letter of Intent on China-France Wheat Genomics Joint Laboratory during the 6th China-France High Level Economic and Financial Dialogue held in Paris; in February 2019, the delegates from CAAS and INRA attended the 14th Meeting of the China-France Committee on Science and Technology Cooperation. In March 2019, CAAS sent high-level delegations to the University of Montpellier, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), IRD (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement), French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD) and Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and had in-depth exchanges with France on deepening and expanding cooperation relations with French research networks and advancing cooperation on greenhouse gas emissions, food security and environment quality.

By Zhang Shuang (zhangshuang@caas.cn)