A recent awareness raising workshop for the plant doctor training of Plantwise was held at the Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University (ZAFU) in Hangzhou in Eastern China. The meeting was aimed at raising awareness among university students, the private sector, and plant protection experts about plant doctor training and certification. About 70 participants were present including around 30 undergraduate and graduate students. It also helped to lay the foundations for potential collaboration between ZAFU, CABI and an agri-business company affiliated to the China Wisdom City Working Committee (CCIT).
The idea is to create a student course in ZAFU that would lead to a plant doctor certificate, thus increasing students’ chances of finding a job or starting up their own agri-businesses. The 7-daycourse will be jointly developed by CABI, ZAFU and CCIT. It will comprise Plantwise’s training modules on field diagnosis and pest management, as well as ZAFU’s modules on local key pest diagnosis, on locally adapted integrated pest management methods and on Chinese agri-policy and pesticide legislation, as well as CCIT’s module on agri-business development.
During the plant doctor awareness workshop, Drs Feng Zhang, Min Wan, and Stefan Toepfer from CABI introduced the Plantwise plant clinic model, related training, and provided a state-of-the-art global overview on IPM. Dr Yang Puyun from the National Agricultural Technology Extension and Service Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, China (NATESC, MoA), Dr Chen Julian from Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (IPP-CAAS), Mr Zheng Yongli from Zhejiang Provincial Plant Protection Bureau, Prof. Jin Peihua, and Prof Zhu Zhujun of ZAFU led workshops or gave technical presentations.
Discover more about Plant Doctor training on the Plantwise website →