On January 26^th, Wu Kongming, Vice President of CAAS, met with Mark Bailey, the Director of Center for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) of UK and Bob Ferrier, Director of Research Impact for James Hutton Institute (JHI) of UK in CAAS headquarter in Beijing. The two sides exchanged views on enhancing scientific cooperation in agricultural resources and ecological environment.

Wu warmly welcomed Mark and Ferrier for their visit to CAAS again. He said Chinese agriculture is facing challenges including non-point source pollution, high production cost, etc. UK is at the world-leading level in researches and practices on precision agriculture, agricultural environment planning and soil ecology, which China can learn more from UK experiences. During visiting to UK last November, President Li Jiayang signed a trilateral Memorandum of Agreement with CHE and JHI. Under this framework, Wu calls for the establishment of long-term collaboration mechanism in areas of common interests and boosting concrete cooperation by initiating joint cooperation programs, establishing joint lab, exchange of scientists and combined training of postgraduates.

Mark and Ferrier expressed that they value the cooperation with CAAS and hoped that researchers from the three units could establish direct contact and strengthen scientific cooperation through programs, exchange of scientists, and joint academic workshops.

In the meeting, the two sides also discussed and reached consensus on priority fields like control of emission of greenhouse gas, assessment of nitrogen cycle mechanism, agroecology and sustainable farming system, land and water resources management.