On December 4-8, Deputy Director Qi Xuebin, professor Li Ping, professor Wang Xiaosen, and Dr. Wang Guangshuai were invited to visit The James Hutton Institute (JHI) and Rothamsted Research.

During the JHI visit, Deputy Director Qi Xuebin and Deputy Director Deb Roberts negotiated the intention to jointly build the "Sino-UK Joint Research Center for the Safety and Efficient Utilization of Agricultural Water and Soil Resources" and drafted a memorandum of agreement. During the discussion with Zhang Zulin’s research team on irrigation risks and non-point source pollution control, Deputy Director Qi Xuebin and associate professor Li Ping gave reports entitled "Introduction of CAAS & FIRI" and "Risk screen, assessment and mitigation of agricultural water" respectively. Representatives of China and Britain jointly had extensive exchanges and mutual interest in cooperation on their respective research backgrounds and directions.

During the visit to Rothamsted, our experts visited Rothamsted’s long-term positioning test field, sample storage and experimental platform. Deputy Director Qi Xuebin and Deputy Director John Crawford discussed the safety use of agricultural water resources, non-point source pollution prevention and control, etc. In-depth exchanges were conducted in the field of cooperation. Finally, Deputy Director Qi Xuebin visited Dr. Liu Yuan, the visiting scholar of our institute, and asked Dr. Liu to take care of himself, work hard, and bring back advanced scientific research experience abroad.

This visit is an important step for our institute to "go global" in the international cooperation. It built a platform for knowledge sharing between our firm, JHI and Rothamsted and made a good preparation for the establishment of the “China-UK Joint Research Center for the Safe and Efficient Utilization of Agricultural Water Resources”. It broadened the channels of our institute's international cooperation, realized the humanistic care for foreign visiting scholars of our institute. The delegation successfully completed the missions of this visit.