Invited by Prof. Achim Dobermann, Director & Chief Executive of Rothamsted Research, an official delegation of 4 scientists led by Jinqiang Chen, Vice Director General of the Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning (IARRP) of CAAS, paid a visit to UK in October, 2014.

During the visit, the delegates met with Dr. Dobermann to discuss the workshop program with the aim to establish China-UK Center for Intensification of Sustainable Agriculture, which will be held in November in CAAS. Moreover, the delegates from IARRP attended the workshop “Application of Backcasting Modeling to Agricultural Systems”. The workshop was sponsored by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and more than 30 senior scientists from UK, USA, China and Uruguay participated in order to prepare an international cooperation to apply back-casting methodology to assess the intensified sustainable agricultural systems in 3 pilot countries, UK, China and Uruguay.

At the workshop, the participants presented the agricultural systems in different countries, exchanged different back-casting models and discussed the framework and focus of the proposals to be prepared. The IARRP contributed to the presentation on “Transformation of agriculture in China towards high yield and high resource use efficiency” given by Dr. Jianbo Shen, Chinese Agricultural University and agreed to continuously be involved in the future plans.

After the workshop, Dr. Achim Dobermannh warmly introduced all the participants the history of the Rothamsted Research and showed around the long-term field experiment on park grass biodiversity established in 1856, which is the oldest ecological experiment in existence. The visits strengthened the links of IARRP with the Rothamsted Research and beyond.