The mission of this center is to study the signaling transduction of subtropical crops in response to the abiotic stresses such as cold and heavy metal, and to develop climate-resilient rice and maize varieties grown in subtropical areas of China.

Staff members

The center has three research groups that are led by Drs. Chen Caiyan, Guoying Xiao< and Xiquan He, and they are working on rice molecular genetics, rice molecular breeding and maize breeding, respectively. In addition, there are six associate professors and about 30 postgraduates.

Projects

Over the last decade, the center obtained more than 40 M (￥) research funding from Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Key Research and Development Plan, National Natural Science Foundation of China and other funding agencies. 

Achievement 

In recent years, the researchers in this center mapped a number of important QTLs and cloned several novel genes that control the agricultural traits of grain-Cd accumulation or chilling tolerance in rice. A series of molecular markers have been developed for marker-assistant breeding; and a total of 14 new varieties, five for low-Cd rice, and nine for abiotic stress tolerant maize, have been approved and registered by Hunan Province Government, In addition, two genetically modified rice varieties resistant to herbicide or insect have been approved by the Central Government for regional trail and food safety evaluation.