On June 13, the 2019 Annual Meeting for the Academic Committee of the State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests (SKLBPI) was held in Beijing. More than 80 persons attended the meeting on-site or through video link (Tecent), including relevant leaders from the Department of Science and Technology Education of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA), the Department of Science and Technology, CAAS, and staff scientists from SKLBPI at IPP-CAAS.

Prof. Zhang Jie, DDG of IPP-CAAS, chaired the opening ceremony. Prof. Zhou Xueping, DG of IPP-CAAS and the Director of SKLBPI, gave a welcome speech on behalf of IPP-CAAS, affirmed that the achievements of SKLBPI are inseparable from the members of Academic Committee. Ren Tianzhi, DG of the Department of Science and Technology, CAAS, fully affirmed the assessment results of SKLBPI. He emphasized that the SKLBPI is currently in a very critical period, and it is necessary to accurately grasp the positioning of laboratory construction, to improve the labor-atory's innovation ability by optimizing the layout of the SKLBPI.

Academician Chen Jianping, Deputy Director of the Academic Committee, chaired the first half of the meeting, and Prof. Lu Yanhui, executive Deputy Director of SKLBPI, reported the 2019 work progress and the 2020 work plan. Prof. Wang Guirong, Deputy Director of SKLBPI, reported that a total of eleven Opening Foundation projects were approved for 2020 after reviewing by the Academic Committee members. Subsequently, Mr. He Yibing, Director of the High-Tech Division, Department of the Science and Technology Education, MARA, expressed his affirmation of the achievements made by SKLBPI. He told the scientists at SKLBIP to meet President Xi's requirements to stand in the frontier of the world agricultural sciences, to satisfy national strategic needs, and to work in the main battlefield of agricultural construction under the new situation. He said it is important to strengthen the penetration of various high technologies such as biopesticides, gene editing technology, and synthetic biology into other disciplines in the agricultural field, to strengthen the establishment of new-type R&D institutions, and to strengthen the technical support and platform construction, eventually providing scientific and technological support for national development.

Academician Wu Kongming, Deputy Director of the Academic Committee, chaired the second half of the meeting. Profs. Liu Xingang, Chen Jieyin, and Assoc. Prof. Li Shanshan gave presentations titled as “Environmental behavior and pollution pre-vention of pesticide”, “Population structure and genomics of Verticillium dahliae”, and “Development of high-yield agricultural engineering bacteria for natural products”, respectively. Then, the members and consultants of the Academic Committee gave talks one by one, providing suggestions on the development of the SKLBPI. Finally, Academician Fang Rongxiang, Director of the Academic Committee, made a summary speech. He emphasized that the scientific research needs innovation, and it is necessary to adjust the directions according to real needs. Therefore, it is important to strengthen the research on agricultural biological safety, to cultivate major scientific and techno-logical achievements according to the major demand in prevention of crop pests.
Overall, the successful convening of the annual meeting played an important role in guiding the future development of SKLBPI.