On May 24^th, Prof. Wu Kongming, member of the Party Group of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and President of CAAS, met with Rafael Mariano Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Prof. Wu Kongming introduced the achievements made by CAAS on discipline construction, innovation research and international cooperation. He stated that as the cradle of China’s nuclear agronomy, CAAS has been attaching great importance to cooperation with IAEA, and achieved fruitful results in joint research programs, capacity building and conversations on policies. In 2019, in particular, the two sides signed an agreement to co-establish the CAAS-IAEA Collaborating Center to boost bilateral strategic cooperation and make contribution to the broad application of nuclear technology in agricultural areas. Going forward, CAAS and IAEA need to promote further cooperation and give a full play to the role of the Center as a fine example to improve the application of nuclear technology in the developing world. The two sides also need to enhance South-South Cooperation and trilateral cooperation on application of safe nuclear technology in food and agricultural areas, and scale up human resource exchange and capacity building between the two and among other member countries. By doing so, CAAS hopes to stand with IAEA to tackle global challenges and overcome hunger and malnutrition by broadening access to nuclear agronomy and applying solutions.

Director General Grossi pointed out that IAEA also pays great attention to the cooperation with CAAS as the two share a deep friendship and vast cooperation prospects. Currently, with food security facing the whole world, developing countries have a strong demand for nuclear agronomy cooperation. IAEA also hopes to join hands and explore further opportunities to take technological advantages of CAAS so as to provide a share to nuclear agronomy development in developing countries by technical cooperation and exchanges among member countries.

Director General and the IAEA delegation also paid a visit to Crop Mutation Breeding Laboratory of Institute of Crop Sciences, CAAS. Sun Tan, Vice President of CAAS, Liu Hua, Vice Director General of IAEA, Huang Wei, Director of the Division of Planning, Information and Knowledge Management, Department of Nuclear Energy, IAEA, Deng Ge, Secretary General of China Atomic Energy Authority, Liu Guanghui, Minister-Counselor of China’s Permanent Mission Institute of Quality Standard and Testing Technology for Agro-Products of CAAS attended these activities.