On December 1^st, 2014, CAAS President LI Jiayang, Vice President WU Kongming met with Prof. Louise Fresco, the Chancellor and Chairman of Executive Board of Wageningen UR (WUR) respectively in Beijing, exchanging views on consolidating further collaboration.

LI highly recognized WUR’s great contribution to the development of agricultural S&T in China through cultivation of many outstanding scientists and elite pioneers in modern agricultural areas. “Our partnership provides important guarantees for further strengthening communication, especially for the sound and stable development of cooperation in various fields, such as genomics, food security and safety, and climate change, etc. We should keep up, especially to strengthen the EU Horizon 2020 cooperation.” LI said.

Fresco expressed willingness to emphasize future cooperation in mutual interested areas. “WUR attaches much importance to the partnership with CAAS.” she said, “China has done a great job in developing agricultural S&T with such large population, which set a good example that can be learned for solving agricultural problems globally. I do believe that CAAS and WUR will deepen cooperation to make greater contribution to the development of world agriculture.”

The framework agreement on joint-PhD programme was signed during the meeting. According to the agreement, 80-100 PhD students will be jointly trained in 4 years.

The scientists from both sides had a seminar to discuss mutual prioritized projects to work together. It was also decided to have CAAS-WUR workshop around February next year in Beijing.