The College of Plant Protection in Nanjing Agricultural University has a long history which can be traced back to the Plant Pathology discipline of Sanjiang Normal College founded in 1902. It was later evolved to the Plant Pathology and Nematology groups in Jinling University in 1916, to the first department of Plant Pest and Disease in China established by National Southeast University in 1921, and finally to the College of Plant Protection founded in 2000. It is one of the important origins of modern Plant Pathology, Entomology and Plant Quarantine in China.
At present, the college has Plant Protection as the national key discipline which comprises three key sub-disciplines including Plant Pathology, and Pest Control and Pesticide Science. The Plant Protection also contains a postdoctoral research center, three sub-disciplines respectively authorizing PhD degrees and master’s degrees and one sub-discipline authorizing bachelor degree. The college has four national or provincial key laboratories and two training centers. These include the Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Crop Diseases and Pests (Ministry of Education), Key Laboratory of Integrated Pest Management in Crops in Eastern China (Ministry of Agriculture), National Joint Engineering Research Center for Green Pesticide Creation and Application Technology, and Pesticide Science Key Laboratory (Jiangsu Province); and Pest Detection and Pest Management Centers (Ministry of Agriculture).
The College has 128 full-time staff members, including 88 teachers with 44 full professors and 31 associated professors. Of those, over 40 are experts of the national “Thousand Talents Program”, ‘The National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars’ or “Cheung Kong Scholar” Professors etc. Each year, the College has around 1100 students, including 500 undergraduates.
The college is one of the major origins of cultivating talents in plant protection. After a century of development, the college has formed the spirit ‘Rigor with Sincerity, Perseverance with Integrity”. The Plant Protection discipline is widely respected in China and it was awarded ‘National Characteristic Discipline’ in 2007, the ‘Key Discipline in Jiangsu Province’ in 2012, the ‘High-talents Education Discipline of the Ministry of Education’ in 2014, ‘Top Discipline Construction Plan’ in Jiangsu Province in 2015, and passed the evaluation on the bachelor education by the Ministry of Education in 2017. In addition, the Plant Pathology team received ‘National-level Teaching Team’ award in 2008. The ‘Foundation Broadening High-talent Education Program’ won the first prize on Teaching Achievement award, the only one prize in the field of plant protection in China.
The college is one of the earliest institutes working on plant protection in China. In recent years, scientific research developed swiftly and obtained over 20 national or provincial prizes. The college hosts 160 scientific projects and obtains a total funding around 100 million every year. Till now, over 200 peer-reviewed SCI articles were published. Studies on the pathogenicity of Phytophthora sojae and Magnaporthe oryzae, Pesticide Resistance, and Detection of Pesticide Residues have made significant progress and the results were published in Science, Nature and several other high impact journals.
From the beginning, the college has set up the principle on coordinating development of teaching, research and applied subjects, enhancing cooperations with Enterprise, and increasing social service. Since 1978, the college has organized over 100 trainings related to pest detection and pest management, and has cultivated many plant protection professionals. To meet the national economic needs, the college is committed to developing practical techniques and novel biochemicals. With this, over 200 national patents were issued, and some brought good economic benefits when applied in the field.
The college is very active in carrying out international communication, and has built long-term cooperation programs with many first-class universities and research institutes around the world, including USA, UK, France, Netherlands, Korea, Australia, Canada and etc. The college obtained two ‘111 Innovative International Cooperation’ grants . With this, the College obtained the national award for international cooperation and two awards from Jiangsu Province. Besides, the staff members are very active in the international scientific community and 18 are editors of 21 international peer-reviewed Journals such as PLoS Pathogens、MPMI、IBMB.
At present, the college is committed to building itself the world-class innovative college, the cradle of cultivating high-level talents for Plant Protection, and the high-level Plant Protection Research and Technology Center of China.