Chinese-Israeli International Training Centre for Agriculture

It was established by Shimon Peres, the Former Israeli foreign minister, on October of 1993. This centre is the bond of traditional friendship between China and Israeli; it is a window and bridge for China to import advanced agricultural skills from Israeli and it is also a technological communication and cooperation base for Chinese and Israeli Agricultural Scientists.

The Chinese-Israeli training centre building was constructed by May of 1998, which is located at China agricultural university east campus. It is a collection of offices, teaching stuff, scientific researches, and accommodation, and it displays the integration of modern building. It has a group of advanced teaching equipment, office equipment and computer rooms for students to work on. In May 1998, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, personally participated in the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the completion of the building.

The territory of Israeli is very small, about two-thirds of the area is desert. Besides, the natural climate condition is very bad. However, the people of Israel through the efforts, with only several decades, they have made remarkable achievements. They have walked out of an agricultural development path with its own national characteristics, which makes Israeli become a county which is having abundant agricultural management experience and world’s leading agricultural high and new technology. The purpose of setting up training centre is to introduce the advanced technology of Israel, to develop agricultural technology talents in our country and promote the development of Chinese agriculture. Since its establishment, the centre has successfully held 53 agricultural high-tech trainings and seminars and more than 1500 students from all over the country attended the training. It successively invited 106 (times) Israeli experts and more than 60 Chinese experts and professors had come to the centre to teach new agriculture technologies. Training involves the modern water saving irrigation, fruits and vegetables postharvest processing, sewage treatment, greenhouse, aquaculture, livestock and poultry breeding, flower cultivation, plant protection, modern rural and farm management, agricultural development and economy, agriculture and environment, green food, food, chemical, etc.

In addition to the training work, the centre also regularly hold various forms of academic seminars to expand the cooperation between the two countries in agriculture area, inviting agricultural scientists and management experts who work on the popularizing agricultural techniques and production from the two countries. In December 1999, the centre held the seminar of ‘China-Israeli agriculture cooperation (also the sixth anniversary year of centre’s establishment)’, summarizing the centre’s achievements since it was established and identifying the aim and purpose of the second phase of the project (January 2000 to December 2005). There were more than 70 guests attending to this seminar including Liu jian, vice minister of China’s agriculture Ministry, NaYueMing, Israel ambassador, and Devon, the director of the international cooperation centre, and etc. In May 2000, it successfully held the “Bilateral water-saving agriculture international academic seminar”. More than 50 experts from the two countries have attended the seminar. It has collected more than 40 high quality academic papers, and then publicly published. In October 2001, it held the 5th council meeting of the centre, people who attended the meeting included Mr. Sharon Sinhun, minister of Israeli Agriculture and Rural Development Department, Mr Shalev, Israel’s ambassador to China, and other Israel’s officers of foreign ministry. The ministry of agriculture officials from China’s ministry of agriculture, ministry of water resources and other relevant departments and a number of directors also presented to the meeting. They thought highly of the second phase of the project and discussed the future work and development direction of the centre. The centre has continually expanded under the care and support of relevant departments of Chinese and Israeli, and it has involved more broad research areas. The students of the centre have spread over the whole of country (apart from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) and centre’s training results are blossom on the motherland.