In September 2019 a delegation of the Competence Area Food Security and CEPLAS (Prof. Kopriva, Prof. Zuccaro, Dr. Stetter, Dr. Grunewald) visited four Universities in China for joint workshops to showcase UoC science and to discuss future cooperation opportunities.

In the workshops, partly organized together with the UoC international office in Beijing and the Vice-Rector for International Affairs, Prof. Mansel, the UoC scientists introduced their research fields and the objectives of the excellence cluster CEPLAS and the competence area Food Security. The Chinese scientists also presented their work and in subsequent round table or single discussions future projects were debated. The German delegation visited four Institutions, the CAS (Chinese Academy of Sciences) Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology in Beijing, the NAU (Nanjing Agricultural University) in Nanjing and CEPAMS (joint CAS – John Innes Center Center of Excellence for Plant and Microbial Science) as well as Fudan University in Shanghai. Besides scientific cooperations, an exchange of students and researchers is planned. Furthermore, ideas about joint conferences and/or summer schools were discussed. The aim to further expand our global network and to promote international and interdisciplinary exchange was thus fully achieved.