On the morning of September 21, 2023, under the guidance of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People’s Republic of China and the Xinhua News Agency, organized by the Department of International Cooperation of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the China Economic Information Service and the Agricultural Bank of China, and co-organized by the Center for Foreign Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the Chinese Society of Foreign Agricultural Economy, the 2023 "Belt and Road" Agricultural Cooperation and Development Forum was held in Beijing, wherein more than 100 people (including government officials, think tank scholars, representatives of multinational companies and media) from China, Cambodia, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Armenia, Tanzania and African Union attended this event.

During the 10 years from proposal of the Belt and Road Initiative, RCEECA has focused on the sustainable development research on agro-ecosystems and achieved fruitful results. Chen Xi (Director of the Research Center for Ecology and Environment of Central Asia (RCEECA)), Ramazhanova Rawshan (Director of Kazakh Research Institute of Soil Science and Agrochemistry) and Narimano Abdujalil (Director of Institute of Genetics and Plant Experimental Biology, Academy of Sciences of Republic of Uzbekistan) were invited to attend this Forum. As the special invited experts at home and abroad, they focused on the theme of science and technology to enhance the level of sustainable development of agriculture in the Topic II, and they shared practical experience and discussed the path of future agricultural scientific & technological cooperation and sustainable development from the perspective of joint research and technology promotion.

At the Forum, Director Chen Xi shared the joint research between China and countries in Central Asia on the sustainable development of natural resources as well as environmental protection science and technology, and over the past 10 years, RCEECA has implemented more than 100 international cooperation science and technology projects. In Central Asia, a number of important achievements have been made in the research and application of cotton water-saving & high-yield technology, wheat drought/pest disaster monitoring & early warning technology, rice dry farming technology, saline-alkali land governance technology, desertification prevention & control technology, and natural disaster risk early warning technology, which have had a significant influence, becoming an important base for international scientific and technological cooperation in the countries along the Belt and Road. Director Ramazhanova Rawshan shared the improvement and demonstration of saline-alkali land jointly conducted with RCEECA in Kazakhstan, and important results have been achieved in the experimental demonstration of salt-tolerant wheat, rice and cotton under film drip irrigation, and medicinal licorice. When sharing the achievements of China-Uzbekistan agricultural science and technology cooperation, Director Narimano Abdujalil addressed that the cotton under film drip irrigation technology from RCEECA of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has been successfully applied in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan where water resources are scarce, and the Uzbek government is actively promoting the cotton drip irrigation technology throughout the country. He further hoped that it was possible to continue promoting the application of advanced agricultural water-saving technology in other crop cultivation fields with our Chinese partners.

It was reported that at this Forum, the Belt and Road Portal’s theme of "Jointly Promoting Agricultural Cooperation and Sharing Development Opportunities" in both English and Chinese was officially launched, focusing on the latest progress of international agricultural cooperation under the framework of jointly developing the "Belt and Road", and striving to expand the convergence of agricultural interests of the "Belt and Road".

Topic II: Promote Scientific and Technological Progress and Enhance the Level of Sustainable Agricultural Development under Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)

Director Chen Xi shared the achievements of scientific and technological cooperation of RCEECA in the past 10 years

Forum Venue