South China Agricultural University selected as “Double World-Class Project”

On February 9 2022, the second list of universities and disciplines included in the "double world-class project” was released by the Ministries of Education and Finance，and the National Development and Reform Commission of China. South China Agricultural University (SCAU) and its Crop Science discipline have been selected. SCAU will take the " Double World-Class " as a new opportunity and a new starting point for high-quality connotative development, and strive to elevate to world-class status and to achieve the grand goal of a world-class university with agricultural characteristics as soon as possible.

The history of South China Agricultural University can be traced back to 1909. In 1952, South China Agricultural University was formed by colleges of Agriculture from three different parts, Sun Yat-sen University, Lingnan University, and Guangxi University. In 1984, it was renamed as South China Agricultural University.

The Crop Science of South China Agricultural University has a long history. Ying Ding, “Father of Rice Science” in China, the first dean of South China Agricultural College took the lead of the Rice Breeding and Light-Temperature Ecology Research in 1920s. He first used the wild hybrid rice to breed new varieties of rice and laid the foundation for the development of crop science.

Since the "13th Five-Year Plan", Crop Science Discipline has been advancing in teams, platforms, projects, and scientific researches, and has provided strong support for biological breeding, the development of modern seed industry, and food security. Botany and zoology, which is an important supplement for crop science, entered the top 1‰ of the ESI global rankings, and Agricultural Sciences entered the top 1% of the ESI global rankings. The team of academician Yaoguang Liu has made outstanding achievement in the field of molecular mechanism of rice hybrid fertility, which won the second prize of the National Natural Science Award. Some research results have been published in Nature Genetics, Nature Communications, and Cell Research.