Recently, Prof. Philip Charles Brookes, director of Department of Soil Microbiology, Rothamsted Research (RR), UK, a famous pedologist, one of the founders for the methodology of micro-biomass measurement, carried out the first visit as visiting professorship for senior international scientists in Institute of Subtropical Agriculture (ISA), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Director Wang Kelin met with him in person, introduced the history and discipline of ISA with great detail. It will be hopeful that ISA and RR can increase understanding and strengthen the academic communication through Professor Brookes’ visit.

During his stay, Professor Brookes gave a series of presentations, entitled ‘Losses of carbon dioxide from soil: Implication for global warming’, ‘Soil phosphorus: from feast to famine’, ‘the concept of soil quality’ and ‘Writing a scientific paper and presentation in English’ etc. in ISA. There were about 40 researchers and students who attended these lectures. He firstly introduced the background of Rothamsted Research (RR), and talked his research field on the impact of global climate change on carbon cycle, agricultural environmentin UK and Africa, and then explained the relationships between climate change and soil fertility and productivity. At last, he talked about the effective ways to organize the manuscript for the international journals. During the talk, Professor Brookes discussed about soil phosphorus effect on the environment and crop yields under the background of global climate change and other hot issues.

This talk is just the beginning of Professor Brookes’ visit in ISA; he will carry out a new project with Dr. Jinshui Wu on ‘Effects of bio-char incorporation on soil fertility and carbon sequestration’. Prof. Philip Charles Brookes is the first senior international visiting scholar of CAS. It is believed that his visit would greatly enhance the international cooperation between ISA and RR. Professor Brookes will visit ISA again later in October.