The College of Resources and Environmental Sciences (CRES) at Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU) was established in 1996, building upon the Department of Soil Science and Agro-chemistry. Its origins trace back to the Soil Science discipline in the Agronomy Department of the former South-East University (later named Jinling University) in 1922. Today, CRES has 102 faculty and staff members, including 36 professors and 38 associate professors and senior scientists, and enrolls 600 full-time undergraduate students and 740 graduate students.
The college is at the forefront of research in soil science, environmental sciences, and agricultural sustainability. A key focus is on utilizing agricultural waste as value-added fertilizers, managing soil microflora, and applying biochar to enhance soil fertility and promote sustainable crop production. Through close industry-university collaboration, CRES has played a leading role in developing China’s organic fertilizer industry while advancing fundamental research, evidenced by a series of influential publications and patents. Research efforts also extend to wastewater treatment and reuse, ensuring compliance with environmental standards while optimizing sludge resource utilization. Using molecular genetic tools, CRES has made significant progress in breeding new crop varieties that efficiently utilize nutrients while minimizing heavy metal accumulation, ultimately improving fertilizer application and ensuring the safety of agricultural products. The college also contributes to research on carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions in agroecosystems and operates an experimental T-FACE (Temperature-Free Air CO2 Enrichment) facility, which allows for the simultaneous stimulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and air temperature. Research on soil fertility has led to innovations in the use of exogenous functional microorganisms to promote healthy soil microbial communities for high-yielding crop production and a deeper mechanistic understanding of microbial interactions in the rhizosphere. The college has developed dozens of new bio-organic fertilizers, which have been licensed as national inventions by the State Intellectual Property Office of the P.R. China. Research on nitrate and phosphate transport systems in paddy rice has identified genes that significantly enhance nitrogen use efficiency and crop yields. Additional research includes work on C/N cycling processes, carbon sequestration in rice paddies, greenhouse gas emissions from croplands, and the estimation of N2O emission factors from agricultural land. The college has recently expanded its work on biochar, with research contributing to national policy discussions, including the National Climate Change Assessment Report and the IPCC report.
CRES is also engaged in research on biotic interactions and their effects on ecosystem functioning. Its ecology team studies soil food web structures, biochemical cycling, plant-soil interactions, and the restoration of degraded ecosystems. In addition to its expertise in land-based environmental research, CRES also features research teams specializing in environmental engineering and marine science. Marine science research at the college includes studies on marine algae biotechnology, marine environmental ecology, bioactive substances from marine organisms, the stress biology of coastal salt-tolerant plants, marine molecular biology, and the use of coastal resources for aquaculture in artificial seawater systems.
With 90% of faculty members having international research experience, CRES actively collaborates with global partners and contributes to national and international discussions on climate change, soil health, and sustainable agriculture.
More information: https://english.njau.edu.cn/612/list.htm.
