Authors: | Date：2012-10-26 08:49:00

The discipline was approved to run master and PhD program in 1983 and 1986, and granted as a national key discipline in 2002 and 2007 respectively. At present it is the only discipline eligible to confer PhD degree of plant pathology in the northwest China. The discipline has a total of 31 faculty members, including 12 full professors, 10 associate professors and 8 lecturers，of whom there are one chair professor and one lecture professor for "Chung Kong Scholar Program" respectively, 10 PhD student supervisors and 16 doctor degree holders. Currently there are one Key Laboratory of Ministry of Education, one Key Laboratory of Ministry of Agriculture and one Institute approved by the Ministry of Agriculture. The discipline has four research fields in Plant Immunology, Plant Virology, Mycology and Plant Ecological Pathology with its stable, unique and preponderant characteristics. Since 2001, it has nurtured 42 PhD graduates and 2 postdoctoral researchers. At present there are 39 students doing their PhD study in university.

The discipline under the leadership of Professor Li Zhengqi, an academician of the CAE, has over 50 years of plant pathological research history with strong work basis. Particularly the research field in plant immunology which focuses on the study of large scale epidemiological regularity of wheat yellow stripe rust, cultivar resistance to disease and variation of pathogen virulence is at the leading position in China and it was granted National Science Conference Award and Second Prize of National Natural Science Award by Chinese Government etc. In recent years, over 50 items of research project undertaken have been supported by National Climb Project, National Key Projects for Basic and High-tech Research of China, National Natural Science Foundation Projects, National Sci-tech Projects of Tackling Key Problem etc. The total research fund reached over 20 million yuan. Since 2001, ten research achievements of science and technology improvement have been rewarded by Shaanxi Provincial Government, including 2 items of first prize, 6 items of second prize and 3 items of third prize. The award of one national invention patent, one excellent doctoral dissertation and two second prizes of Shaanxi Province for outstanding teaching achievement were also obtained respectively. There are 19 academic works and textbooks edited, more than 400 papers published in foreign and domestic journals, of which 31 have been collected by SCI. The Master and PhD students graduated from the Department of Plant Pathology are popular with the employers. At the same time, the tie of international cooperative research and academic exchange has been established with universities and research institutes of USA, Germany, UK, France, Canada, Japan, South Africa and Australia etc.

In recent years, outbreak of important crop diseases in the northwest China was chosen as the major targets for research. Based on combination of traditional research method of plant pathology with modern techniques of histology, cytology, cytochemistry and molecular biology etc., the mechanism of host resistance, pathogenicity and virulent variation of pathogens, virus transmitted by aphid, virus disease chemical control, systemic taxonomy of mycology, the molecular genetic structure of pathogenic population and integrated pest control were carried out under the population, individual, tissue, cellular and molecular levels and the following research results were achieved: (1) The system of molecular marker for wheat stripe rust pathogen has been first established, which directly confirms that "gene flow" phenomenon of the pathogen exists among the wheat growing areas in China;(2)It is confirmed that mutation and heterokaryon are the two major channels of virulent variation of Chinese rust pathogen in accordance with biological and cytological study; (3) It is first established the disease infection model of spike by wheat head scab pathogen in the world and modified and clearly understood the infection process of Fusarium graminearum of wheat. It is also first successfully set up the cellular positioning technique of Gibberellin of wheat head scab by immunoassay and reveals the mechanism of pathogenicity of the toxin; (4) It is first found that there are abundant high-temperature resistant germplasm resources of wheat to stripe rust in China and confirmed that the regularity of resistant expression, histology, cytology and biochemical mechanism of disease-resistance and their utilization are clarified; (5) The mechanism of virus transmitted by aphid is revealed and the relevant genes have been cloned; (6) Virus-resistant plants and the new fine lines of hot pepper are obtained by genetic engineering and utilizing the conjunct genes of TMV-CP and CMV-CP; (7) A new type of virus chemical inhibitor (Bindubike) was developed and widely extended in large areas in production; (8) The IPM system was established and adapted to different ecological wheat growing regions in north China and widely used in production. Some of its research achievements have been widely extended to Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Sichuan, Henan and Shandong provinces with remarkable economic and social benefits, contributing a lot to promote the sustainable development of agriculture in the northwest China.

Aiming to develop into a first class discipline in China, taking the opportunity of the Great West Development and the university's integration of internal reform and restructuring, researchers in the field will upgrade the scientific equipment, optimize the academic team, strengthen international cooperation and exchanges, and improve the overall teaching and research. Thus a base for high quality talent cultivation and scientific research in plant pathology with distinguished characteristics will come into being.

After another five years of endeavor, significant progress in wheat stripe rust control, strategy and tactics for prolonging variety resistance, a sustainable control system for major catastrophes, molecular mechanism of plant resistance, anti-crop disease gene molecular markers, disease resistance gene cloning and the genetic engineering of crops resistant are to be expected.