CAAS President Dr. LI Jiayang met with Prof. Robert Zeigler, Director General of International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) on November 1o,2014. Both sides exchanged the ideas to further strengthen collaboration in rice research and technology innovation.

LI highly recognized scientific achievements IRRI made especially the cooperative outcomes with China. “As one of the first partners among international agricultural research institutes, IRRI and CAAS reached productive and fruitful achievements in exchange of rice germplasm, breeding and cultivation, biotechnology, etc. in past 40 years, which has contributed greatly to the rice productivity globally.” LI said, “Such as the Super Hybrid Rice, the Global Rice Science Partnership ( GRiSP), and 3000 Germplasm Genome Re-sequencing Programme are successfully implemented based on our cooperation.”

LI indicated that rice is the major staple food crop in China. With the development of rice genome research, it is very important to set up database composed of core collection genotype and agronomic phenotype, explore good genes and make breakthrough in technology of rice complex molecular improvement in order to accelerating the breeding of high-yield, good quality and adaptability rice.

Zeigler agreed with LI and expressed appreciation that CAAS has been making great efforts and contribution to the IRRI-China partnership relations. IRRI would like to keep promoting partnership with CAAS.

Talent cultivation and exchange was also discussed during the meeting.

Prof. Zeigler also attended the conference “Agricultural Genomics — From Variation to Crops” in this Beijing visit.