Prof. Yunsong Lai from China is an honorary professor for Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Research (SAERC) Faculty of Technology. His work in SLTC is to strengthen SEARC’s capacity in advanced genetic improvement, molecular breeding and precision cultivation; facilitate the integration of high technologies into sustainable agriculture research and training; and deliver and guide an advanced level course titled “Advance d Plant Molecular Breeding and Cultivation”.

He obtained his Ph.D. from College of Agriculture, Hokkaido University, Japan. He is currently a full professor at University Sichuan Agricultural University (China) and the leader of the fruit Vegetable Research Group.

He has been honored with titles including Sichuan Provincial Academic and Technological Leader and High-Level Overseas Talent of Sichuan Province. He serves as an editorial board member for journals such as Vegetable Research and International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS). He has received one Second Class Prize of the Sichuan Provincial Science and Technology Progress Award. He has presided over 2 projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and 8 other provincial and ministerial-level or above projects. He has published 30 papers in internationally renowned journals including Plant Physiology and Journal of Experimental Botany.

His main research interests include: collection and gene mining of cucurbit and vegetable germplasm resources; genetic regulation of sex expression in cucumber; genetic mapping of key agronomic traits in Xishuangbanna cucumber; three-line hybrid breeding in pepper and development of pepper haploid inducer lines.

In social services, he focuses on the planning and design of high-standard vegetable industrial parks, provides cultivation technical training for farmers, and offers technical solutions for high-value-added vegetable production.