General Information

Laboratory of Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Phytohormones has a long history of conducting phytohormonal and plant mineral  research from the early 1940's, when the founder of the laboratory Professor Dujing Hu began his early work on the rooting effect of auxin in Kunming during World War II. From 1953 to 1998 it was part of the teaching and research group of plant physiology at Hunan Agricultural University. In 1998, the laboratory was re-organized and renamed as the "Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Phytohormones" by the Hunan Provincial Education Commission.

At present, the laboratory has a crew of 3 professors, 2 associate professors, 3 assistant professors, 1 staff research associate, 2 laboratory assistants as well as 2 visiting scientists and 11 graduate students under Ph.D. and MSc. programs.

The laboratory actively takes part in domestic and international academic exchange. It welcomes graduate students from China and other countries to pusue an academic degree here and it is also interested to seek collaborating opportunities of any form with colleague scientists from Chinese or foreign laboratories and the related industries.

Scientific Achievements

As located in Hunan, one of the most important agricultural provinces in China, the laboratory focused itself on the local crop yield/quality problems as well as some important theoretical research areas regarding phytohormones and other related field in plant physiology and plant mineral nutrition. Its efforts as to develop plant growth regulators, to search potassium-rich plants as green manure and to improve the nutrient solutions for hydroponic systems of commercially important crops greatly benefited the local agriculture. Its new approaches as to investigate the hormonal metabolism of 2-line hybrid rice, to improve mineral efficient crop strains using biotechnology and develop plant growth regulators specially designed for various crops turned out to be very successful. Meanwhile its achievement in the theory of developing computer simulated growth models, designing nutrient solutions and breeding mineral efficient crop strains using biotechnology were widely recognized by the outside world. Many scientists from the laboratory have been invited to visit foreign laboratories or to attend international scientific meetings all over the world. On the other hand, many scientists from other countries such as Australia, Canada, Japan, Thailand and USA visited the laboratory. Through its devotion to the advancement of local agriculture and plant science, the laboratory is winning domestic and international significance.

Research Interests

Plant growth substances, plant mineral nutrition and stress physiology are important research areas of the laboratory.However, the laboratory is also interested in some other plant physiological problems especially those proposed by the local agricultural and horticultural industry.