IPNI China Program 2016 Annual Meeting Was Held in Guangzhou

During February 22-rd, 2017, the International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) China Program 2016 annual meeting was successfully held in Guangzhou. Approximately 100 representatives from 45 institutions including Dr. Kaushik Majumdar, Vice President of IPNI, China Program staff, research scientists from different provincial institutions and universities, representatives from national and international fertilizer industries participated in this meeting. During the opening ceremony, Dr. Kaushik highly complimented the extraordinary achievements about rational fertilization and nutrient management made by IPNI China program in the past 30 years. He also pointed that in the future research, we should consider the potentially positive impact on food security, farmers’ profitability and environmental stewardship, even try to scale up to large areas, thus to help the government, farmers, fertilizer industry to realize their aspirations. The director of China program Dr. He once introduced and emphasized the main task of IPNI and would work together with national team and governmental research project on further improvement of chemical fertilizer use efficiency in China.

Totally 48 presentations on Nutrient Expert for rice, crops, commercial crops, vegetables, fruit trees, 4R (right source, right rate, right time and right place) Nutrient Management and new fertilizer sources was given by the participants. This meeting provided a great platform of hot discussions and idea exchange to all participants coming to this meeting. In the end, Dr. He summarized and brought new tasks for the coming year. She also pointed that we should focus on turning the scientific research results to available technologies to serve the development of Chinese agriculture in the future.

As an important part of this meeting, five Chinese graduate students who received 2016 IPNI Scholar Award attended and were offered the awards at the meeting. Since 2007, IPNI offers awards to outstanding graduate students majoring in soil and plant nutrition and related areas all over the world. In the year of 2016, there were 36 winners standing out from 199 applicants worldwide, and five of them are from China. They are Chiming Gu, from Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Ting Li and Khalid Mehmmod, from Nanjing Institute of Soil Science, CAS, Qian Zhang, from Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, CAAS.