Recently, Institute of Plant Protection (IPP) and Institute of Grassland Research (IGR) co-organized China Forum on Grassland Protection and CAAS Innovation Team of Rangeland Protection Workshop in CAAS Experimental and Demonstrational Base in Agropastoral Area. Dr. LI Jinxiang, vice president of CAAS, was present and made a speech. Mr. ZHANG Bujiang, party secretary of IPP, Dr. HOU Xiangyang, DG of IGR, and party secretary WANG Yuqing, and Mr. WANG Kun, Secretary General of Chinese Grassland Society were present at the Workshop.

Team of Monitoring and Controlling of Rangeland Pests, IPP, and team of Disaster Mechanism and Control of Rangeland Pests, IGR, discussed how to deepen the collaborative innovation of the teams and strengthen the mechanism of collaboration and exchange. The team members focused on grassland insect and rodent pests and pasture diseases and delivered presentations. The two teams coordinated the research directions and orientation of development and settled the sharing of platform, such as equipment, data, field experimental stations, etc. The discussion emphasized collaboration. The teams decided to collaboratively face the demands emerged during the course of development in rangeland and husbandry industry and jointly apply the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program (ASTIP), a program launched by CAAS, and the national awards in the areas of rangeland protection research.

Vice President LI Jinxiang affirmed fully the positive progress made by both teams in collaborative innovation. The launch of ASTIP brought over the unprecedented opportunity for rangeland protection sciences, LI said. As the national teams in rangeland protection research, it was needed to root in serving production demands and to pursue answers for scientific questions in the frontier of the discipline’s development. Such, we could play crucial role in enhancing the overall level of research in grassland protection, he said. LI pointed out that there were 400 million hectares of grassland in China. The area under the harm of diseases, insect pests, rodents and poisonous and harmful plants was over 66 million hectares. This resulted in deterioration of ecology and serious economic losses and threatened hugely the achievements of grassland ecological construction. The researches in grassland protection were in need of intensification. IPP and IGR established, respectively, innovation teams in rangeland protection to study collaboratively the control of rangeland pests from different aspects. This met well with the direction of collaborative innovation sparkplugged by CAAS, LI said. He expected that the forum could become normalcy and to absorb more institutions related to this area to take part. He hoped scientists in this area could collaborate in exchanging experience, integrating resources and sharing information so as to strengthen top-level design and layout and provide scientific and technical support to the services in grassland protection.

Dr. ZHANG Zehua, the chief scientist of the team of Monitoring and Controlling of Rangeland Pests, IPP, and Dr. LI Yanzhong, the chief scientist of the team of Disaster Mechanism and Control of Rangeland Pests, IGR, and core member scientists in these two innovation teams and related experts in rangeland protection were present at the Workshop. There were more than 60 participants all together.