Huazhong Agricultural University (HZAU) – 华中农业大学 is located in Wuhan, Hubei Province, in central China. Founded in 1898 during the reign of Emperor Guangxu (1871-1908) of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the university was originally established as the Hubei Farming School by Zhang Zhidong, then governor of Hubei and Hunan provinces. HZAU has a long history of international education, welcoming its first international students in 1960 and becoming China’s first pilot unit for training highly educated foreign students in 2003. Today, the university offers specialized disciplines such as crop science, horticulture, animal husbandry, veterinary medicine, and food science and engineering to international students. Approximately 500 international students from 54 countries are currently enrolled, with 70% pursuing doctoral degrees and 30% pursuing master’s degrees.
HZAU provides education in classical agricultural sciences, including Animal Husbandry, Veterinary Science, Biology, Horticulture, Crop Science, and Agricultural Economics and Management. The university has made significant research contributions in areas such as plant and animal genetics and breeding, genomics and molecular biology, animal preventive veterinary medicine, pomology, horticulture and vegetable science, disease prevention and control in plants and animals, agricultural product safety evaluation, plant and animal production technology, food engineering, agricultural resource efficiency, biomass energy development, agricultural economics, and land management.
HZAU is home to numerous national and ministerial key laboratories, including the National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, the National Key Laboratory of Agro-Microbiology, and the National and Local United Engineering Laboratory of Animal Disease Prevention and Control. Other key research platforms include the National Reference Laboratory of Veterinary Drug Residues, the National Laboratory of Safety Evaluation of Veterinary Drugs, and the Animal Bio-Safety Level 3 Laboratory of Huazhong Agricultural University. The university also hosts multiple Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) Key Laboratories, such as those for Horticultural Plant Biology, Agricultural Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction, Environment Correlative Dietology, Agricultural Genomics, Rapeseed Genetic Improvement, Agro-Microbial Resource and Development, Freshwater Animal Breeding, Development of Veterinary Diagnostic Products, Arable Land Conservation, Ecophysiology and Farming Systems in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River, and Detection of Veterinary Drug Residues.
Beyond national research initiatives, HZAU has established international research collaborations, including the International Cooperation Base on Genetic Improvement, the International Joint Research Center for Agro-Biotechnology, the International Joint Research Centre for Animal Disease Control, the International Cooperation Base on Animal Breeding and Disease Control Technology, the International Joint Research and Training Center for Veterinary Epidemiology, and the Hubei International Cooperation Base for Waste Conversion by Insects.
More information: https://en.hzau.edu.cn/.
