Dr. Sethi, executive director, Pest Management Center, Dr. Wen Chen and Dr. Sheedy, research scientists, from Agriculture and Agri-food Canada (AFC) visited the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMCAS) on June 30, 2016.

The delegation from Canada delivered wonderful speeches which were presided over by Dr. CAI Lei, chief scientist of BioResource and Big Data Center, IMCAS. Dr. Sethi briefly introduced general situation of Canadian agriculture, scientific and technological power, and strategic direction of Canadian Ministry of Agriculture and cooperation between Canadian Ministry of Agriculture and China. The strategic target covers improvement of Canadian agricultural productivity, sustainable development of environment and solution to threatening that agriculture and agri-food value chain are faced with.

Meanwhile, he emphasized scientific and technological cooperation between Canada and China in aspect of agriculture and exchange of scientific and technological information and talents.

Dr. Chen, from Ottawa Research and Development Center, introduced environmental Metagenomics and biological monitoring based on DNA and the cooperation fields that Canada expects to conduct.

Canadian representatives also came to our Network Information Center and they had talks with LIU Shuangjiang, director-general of IMCAS, MA Juncai, director of BioResource and Big Data Center and CAI. Both parties discussed cooperation field and personnel exchange programs and expected win-win cooperation in aspects such as agriculture, strains exchange, microbial big data and genomics and expected to sign cooperative MOU at suitable time. After the talks, the delegation visited China General Microbiological Culture Collection in IMCAS.

At present, IMCAS owns the largest microbial culture collection in China and a BioResource and Big Data Center. It also the hosts World Data Center for Microorganisms which is the first world data center in life sciences in China.