On May 26, CCTV News made an in-depth report on a targeted poverty alleviation project as led by Prof. Yu Longjiang and his team from School of Life Science and Technology, HUST. The project is located in Linxiang District, Lincang Prefecture, Yunnan Province.  

Linxiang District is one of the most undeveloped area in Yunan although it  hosts a national high-quality tea plantations with an area of over 3,450,000 hectares, among which plantations of ancient tea trees cover an area of over 675,000 hectares. In the past, it was not easy to sell local tea leaves due to multiple limitations. Local families lived a poor life although they possessed hundreds of hectares’ plantations.

In 2013, HUST initialed a one-to-one assistance project to Linxiang District for local poverty reduction. In that year, Prof Yu Longjiang’s team proposed a new biotech method to improve the quality and quantity of the tea product. Besides, a new underwood planting method for roxburgh anoectochilus terminal buds was explored and recommended to local villagers since 2017. All these multifold the locals’ annual income. “Now we have an annual income of 20,000-30,000yuan.”    

It is the production and processing mode of government-university-industry collaboration that has revived local citizens’ hope of eliminating poverty. As HUST president Ding Lieyun remarked, “It’s a win-win project to local residents and HUST researchers. Through the research –produce module, the local residents better their life, the researchers improved their research and teaching.”