China opened two laboratories in partnership with Brazil and Montenegro on Saturday in Chongqing”s Beibei district as part of efforts to develop international cooperation in the citrus industry.
The labs will devise strategies for disease-resistant breeding and transmission prevention, with a focus on advancing sustainable development in the industry.
An unveiling ceremony took place during a two-day symposium in Beibei, which attracted leading pest and disease control experts from China, Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Italy, and Montenegro. The two-day symposium aimed to promote collaborative research on pest and disease outbreaks, enhance control measures, and advance the industry’s high-quality development.
The newly unveiled China-Brazil Joint Laboratory for the Prevention and Control of Major Citrus Diseases and Pests and China-Montenegro Joint Laboratory for Sustainable Control of Crop Pests are expected to play crucial roles in these efforts.
Nelson Arno Wulff, chief scientist in biotechnology and diagnostics at Fundecitrus, a non-profit Brazilian fund dedicated to citrus plant protection, emphasized the importance of this collaboration, saying that the work will help foster “a good citrus culture, supporting growers, and aiding the industry”.
As the world’s leading citrus producers, China and Brazil face common challenges, such as the major threat of citrus greening disease, which slowly kills trees and has no known cure.
Chongqing plays a vital role in China’s citrus industry. Liu Chenglong, vice-chairman of the Chongqing Association for Science and Technology, noted that the city boasts a citrus planting area of over 256,667 hectares, with an annual production of 5.3 million tons and an output value exceeding 50 billion yuan ($7.33 billion).
Beibei, in particular, provides over 50 percent of the country’s virus-free container-grown seedlings, cementing its position as China’s largest high-quality citrus seedling production base, said Lyu Jun, deputy head of Beibei.
The two-day forum featured keynote speeches and presentations from experts from around the world. Hosted by Southwest University and the Beibei government, the event was part of the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle initiative, co-organized by science and technology bureaus from Chongqing’s Beibei and Sichuan’s Mianyang.