Dr. Manjeet Sethi, the Director of Pest Management Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (PMC-AAFC) visited IPP-CAAS on 29 June, 2016, together with Dr. Claudia Sheedy, a scientist in pesticide sciences, and Dr. Wen Chen, a scientist in bioinformatics. The two parties exchanged and talked on issues of mutual collaborations. Mr. Bujiang Zhang, the Party Secretary and DDG of IPP and DDG Dewen Qiu received the visitors. Dr. Lixia Wang, the Deputy Director of the Department of International Cooperation of IPP hosted the meeting.

DDG Qiu greeted the Director Sethi and his colleagues and introduced briefly the basic information on discipline construction, the research work, and the international collaboration and exchange in IPP. He recalled also the collaboration and exchange with AAFC and hoped to expand the areas of collaboration based on the existing collaborations. Dr. Sethi presented the basic information on AAFC, the strategic goals in agricultural science and technology, the general situation of collaboration in agricultural sci-tech between AAFC and China, the way of collaboration and the priorities. He expressed the intention to strengthen the in-depth collaboration with IPP in the areas of plant protection. Profs. Chenyang He, Xuenong Xu and Qiuxia Wang, Associate Profs. Jun Xu and Nianwan Yang and Dr. Huan Peng talked separately on the progress gained in molecular interactions between plant and pathogenic bacteria, the application of predatory mites in biological control, soil disinfestation technologies, the analysis of pesticide residues, monitoring and control of invasive alien species, the occurrence and control of plant nematodes, etc., and the foundation and intention for mutual collaboration in related areas. Drs. Sheedy and Chen from AAFC talked, respectively, on Transfer of pesticide in atmosphere and the climate change and Environmental metagenomics and DNA-based bio-surveillance. The two parties discussed on the future collaboration areas and way of collaboration thereafter and reached a preliminary consensus.

Dr. Chen presented a talk entitled High-throughput sequencing in pathogen surveillance: Filling gaps in reference data after the meeting and answered questions put by live scientists and students. Director Sethi and his colleagues visited the State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests and laboratories for plant-bacteria interaction, predatory mites and pesticide residue analysis.

The visit paid by Director Sethi and his colleagues deepened their understanding to the research work carried out at IPP and is important to the mutual in-depth exchange and collaboration in future.