SEW-REAP Addressing food Security, Environmental stress and Water by promoting multidisciplinary Research EU And China

Partnerships in science and business

Opening Conference

‘Building the New International Science of the Agri-Food-Water-Environment Nexus’

9th -10th January 2016

Biaoben Building, GIG-CAS Guangzhou, China

Organizers:

I-RICE, Guangzhou Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, CAS

Lancaster University

1

Welcome to Guangzhou! Essential Information/Orientation

Contact Details for Organizers: David Tyfield: d.tyfield@lancs.ac.uk +86 132 6599 5374 Mandy Wu: wumanqing@gig.ac.cn +86 136 9026 1821

Ramada Hotel

GIG

Panxi Restaurant

2

Conference Rationale and Background I-RICE (the International Research and Innovation Centre for the Environment) is a joint initiative between Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry (GIG-CAS) and the Xiamen Institute of the Urban Environment. We are delighted to be hosting you at this important workshop. I-RICE is currently hosting the €700,000 EuropeAid-funded project SEW-REAP, which aims to stimulate a quantum step up in research interaction between partners from the EU and China through a programme of extended secondments, from the former to the latter, and a related series of workshops and conferences. SEW-REAP’s partners are LEC and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in the EU and GIG-CAS, China Agricultural University and the State Key Laboratory for Agro-biotechnology in China. SEW-REAP aims to support the formulation and then execution of ambitious multi-disciplinary and internationally collaborative projects that address complex and systemic problems, specifically regarding the agriculture-food-water-environment nexus; and the development of the capacities, institutions, connections and researchers needed for ongoing work in this domain. In their geographical reach, social and natural intensity and global implications, China is something of a crucible regarding the challenges of food and water security and their environmental aspects that face all societies in the 21st century. This workshop thus aims to pull together leading Chinese and UK/Spanish teams to formulate 4 concrete projects. These are to be both small enough to be doable in current circumstances but also with ambition and scope to be merely first steps towards the kind of big, complex projects that all parties present are seeking to develop together. The conference will thus conclude with concrete plans for each of these 4 projects, formulated as early stage demonstration projects (and/or steps towards them) with broader/ bigger medium-term ambitions (e.g. a research station) to be sited in specific, identified locations in China (identified at least to the level of target province). All 4 of these projects are also to respond to the same high-level Chinese policy challenge of maximizing agriculture output while minimizing ecological costs (hence examining the impact of agriculture systems on the environment and vice versa) with one project regarding each of 4 major Research Themes, which are priority areas and fields of expertise of the partners: RT 1 - Agriculture-environmental systems and growing safe food, including integrated

pest/weed/disease and pesticide/pollution management RT 2 - Sustainable intensification of agriculture RT3 – Sustainable soil management RT4 - Water management, including water quality Each group is asked to think of concrete plans for funding the project they formulate. To assist their development, though, each of these 4 projects will also have 2 workshops from SEW-REAP (funding approx. £3500 each) to be used as the basis for project meetings to build up momentum, and to be held before the end of 2018 at the very latest.

3

Conference Programme Day 1 (Saturday 9th January) 8.20 am Coach from Ramada Hotel Plenary Session 1: Setting the Scene (Main Hall, 3rd Floor) 9-10.30am Opening session

• Welcome (Gan Zhang and Kevin Jones) • Keynote – The Agri-food-water-environment Nexus and its challenges and

opportunities for research and data integration (Bill Davies) • Keynote – The high-level policy priorities of China regarding the Nexus (Fusuo Zhang) • Discussion • Introducing SEW-REAP and Conference Agenda (David Tyfield)

10.30-11am Group Photo and Refreshments 11-12.45pm Session 2: Short summaries (10 mins each) of past examples of integrative work across the key Research Themes (listed above), leaving plenty of time for discussion.

• Mike Bowes: The CEH Thames Initiative • Juan José Alarcón & Francisco Pedrero: Agricultural Water Use -The SIRRIMED

Project and Wastewater Irrigation • John Quinton: The Macro Nutrients Project • Simon Vaughan: Examples from Rothamsted Research • LEC Presentation: TBC

12.45-2pm Lunch Workshop Conference participants will break up into four groups, one for each Research Theme. Each break-out group will be led by 1 Chinese and 1 EU Session Coordinator, and will be tasked with answering the same questions, filling out the same set of outputs in a table template.

NB Sessions are not expected to reach any definitive answers at this stage, but only to make significant concrete progress to the formulation of demonstration projects that can take on the research questions that arise from discussion. The groups are as follows (* denotes Session Coordinator, in alphabetical order): RT1 - Agriculture-environmental systems and growing safe food (Room 722):

Heard* (CEH), Morillo (CSIC), Ouyang* (GIG), Lu (RCEES), Undabeytia Lopez (CSIC), Wackers (LEC), Wu (SCAU), You (GIG), [Zhang H (LEC)], [Tyfield (LEC)]

4

RT2 - Sustainable intensification of agriculture (Main Hall, 3rd floor)

Davies (LEC), Dodd (LEC), Parry* (LEC), Rees (CEH), Shen* (CAU), Vaughan (RR), Wang J (SCAU), Zhang J (CUHK), Zhang F (CAU), Zhao (RR), Zhu X (SIBS), [Niu (CAU)]

RT3 – Sustainable soil management (Room 614)

Jones (LEC), Li H (LEC/CEH), Li Y (SCAU), Luo* (GIG), Quinton* (LEC), Zhang G (GIG), Zhang H (LEC), Zhu Y (IUE/RCEES), [Tyfield (LEC)]

RT4 - Water management, including water quality (Room 503)

Alarcón (CSIC), Bowes (CEH), Lacorte* (CSIC), Niu (CAU), Pedrero (CSIC), Sweetman (LEC), Wang Y* (GIG), Ying (GIG), Zhou (LEC), [Zhang H (LEC)], [Li H (LEC/CEH)]

2-3.15pm Break-out Session 1

• Roundtable Introductions (2 mins each) • Step 1: A brief 15-20 minute presentation regarding: Q1: What is the specific issue or set of issues regarding this Research Theme for China (i.e. bringing the general introduction in the Keynote to this specific Research Theme)? Why don’t solutions currently exist? What needs to be constructed, overcome, understood etc…? From the following speakers: RT1: Yonglong Lu RT2: Jianhua Zhang RT3: Yongguan Zhu RT4: Guangguo Ying

3.15-3.45 Refreshments (Main Hall, 3rd Floor) 3.45-5.30pm Break-out Session 2 Step 2: General discussion amongst all participants of 6 remaining questions, but focusing at this stage on Qs 2-4:

Q2: What international collaborative research agenda/programme would be a major step in addressing the issues raised by Q1? What would be an ambitious but realisable medium-term (5-10 year) project/programme?

Q3: Given this team of institutions and researchers, how could this be shaped into an initial demonstration project? Or what concrete steps are needed next to formulate such a project? Involving whom, doing what research and/or KE?

Q4: What would be the data requirements of this demonstration project? What data would need to be integrated and how could this be done?

5

Q5: How could the demonstration project – and subsequent larger programme – be funded? Is it realistic that Chinese money could be raised that could, in turn, be matched by EU/UK sources, and how?

Q6: Where (geographically in China, not institutionally) should the project be based? Could provincial/local government funds and/or international sources (Asian Development Bank, Gates…) be accessed to support the project?

Q7: Timetable for next steps, including schedule for 2 workshops to be held in China and preparation for applications for demonstration project funding and (where possible) subsequent programme funding.

pm Dinner (at the famous Panxi Restaurant on Liwan Lake in old Guangzhou) Coaches to the restaurant will leave from outside the Biaoben Building no later than 6pm Coaches from the restaurant to the Ramada Hotel will leave at 9.15pm. Day 2 (Sunday 10th January) 9am Coach from Ramada Hotel 9.30am Refreshments (Main Hall, 3rd Floor) 10-12pm Break-out Session 3 Step 3: Continuing discussion and finalizing plans to report back, focusing in particular on the crucial practical and logistical Qs 5-7. At the end, all groups must return a completed template.

12-1.15pm Lunch (Main Hall, 3rd Floor) Plenary Session 2 (Main Hall, 3rd Floor) 1.15-3.35pm Reconvene – Joint discussion of Break-out sessions

• The conference will reconvene as a group and discuss the concrete plans formulated by each break-out group. Session Coordinators for each group will first present their answers to question 1-7 (filled templates will be photocopied over the lunch break and circulated to all to facilitate this discussion), followed by open discussion. Each group will have 10-15 mins to present and 20 mins for discussion.

3.35-4pm Break

6

4-5pm Building a Vision

• The final session will be an opportunity to brainstorm a 1 or 2-page output brief, aiming for a letter to Nature or Science, drawing on the concrete projects planned to build up a bigger vision of the kind of interdisciplinary, international and engaged science needed, its specific challenges and the kinds of funding mechanisms and institutional innovations needed to make this happen. The output brief will be written up by a team after the event and will be presented to existing and potential funders (e.g. RCUK) to elicit their support for the demonstration projects and the big programmes that they aim to seed. (If you wish to be part of this writing team, please contact David Tyfield.)

5pm Close – Transport to Ramada Hotel and/or Baiyun Airport Conference Participants (alphabetical by surname) (*Session Coordinator)

• Juan José Alarcón (CSIC) – RT4 • Mike Bowes (CEH) – RT4 • Bill Davies (LEC) – RT2 • Ian Dodd (LEC) – RT2 • Matthew Heard (CEH) – RT1* • Kevin Jones (LEC) – RT3 • Silvia Lacorte (CSIC) – RT4* • Hong Li (LEC/CEH) – RT3/4 • Yongtao Li (SCAU) – RT3 • Yonglong Lu (RCEES-CAS) – RT1 • Chunling Luo (GIG-CAS) – RT3* • Esmaralda Morillo (CSIC) – RT1 • Jun Niu (CAU) – RT4/2 • Tingping Ouyang (GIG-CAS) – RT1* • Martin Parry (LEC) – RT2* • Francisco Pedrero (CSIC) – RT4 • John Quinton (LEC) – RT3* • Gwyn Rees (CEH) – RT2 • Jianbo Shen (CAU) – RT2*

• Andy Sweetman (LEC) – RT4 • David Tyfield (LEC) – RT1/3 • Tomas Undabeytia Lopez (CSIC) – RT1 • Simon Vaughan (Rothamsted) – RT2 • Felix Wäckers (LEC) – RT1 • Jianwu Wang (SCAU) – RT2 • Yunpeng Wang (GIG-CAS) – RT4* • Qitang Wu (SCAU) – RT1 • Guangguo Ying (GIG-CAS) – RT4 • Jing You (GIG-CAS) – RT1 • Fusuo Zhang (CAU) – RT2 • Gan Zhang (GIG-CAS) – RT3 • Hao Zhang (LEC) – RT3/1 • Jianhua Zhang (CUHK) – RT2 • Fangjie Zhao (Rothamsted/ NJAU) – RT2 • Zheng Zhou (LEC) – RT4* • Xinguang Zhu (SIBS-CAS) – RT2 • Yongguan Zhu (IUE/RCEES-CAS) – RT3

Our thanks to these Organizers and Helpers • Mandy Manqing Wu • Shaorui Wang • Yingtao Sun • Longfei Jiang • Qing Dai • Yishan Jiang • Jibing Li

7

Participant Bios Dr. Juan José Alarcón is a Professor Research of CEBAS Irrigation Department from 1996. Previously, he reached the Ph.D. degree from Murcia University and he obtained a postdoctoral fellowship in the “Horticulture Research Institute” of Wellesbourne (England). He is expert in “Plant physiology under water stress” and “Irrigation water management”. He has published more than 80 articles in SCI Journals and he has been invited in different International Congresses and Conferences related with “Water irrigation management in arid environments”. Nowadays he is the scientific director of CEBAS-CSIC (www.cebas.csic.es), an institute with more of 200 people working in science, being the main responsible of the management and coordination of different research groups included in the center. He has also a great experience in the management of research projects, being the main responsible of 20 national and international proposals and coordinating projects from two different European Frame-Work Programs (FP6 and FP7) on Sustainable Orchard Irrigation for Improving Fruit Quality and Safety (IRRIQUAL). www.irriqual.com. European funding: €2,224,693. 2006-2009; and Sustainable Use of Irrigation Water in the Mediterranean Region (SIRRIMED). www.sirrimed.org. European funding: €2,999,078. 2010-2014. He also coordinates the On-Line professional irrigation scheduling expert system (OPIRIS) www.opiris.eu. European funding: €840,000. 2013- 2015. Email: jalarcon@cebas.csic.es Mike Bowes is a senior nutrient hydrochemist and leads the Water Quality Processes Group at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. His research focuses on understanding the sources, fates and dynamics of phosphorus, nitrogen and silicon within river catchments at high temporal resolution, and how this affects river ecology. He has developed the Load Apportionment Model, which offers a tool for determining the relative quantities of P and N entering rivers from point and diffuse, agricultural sources. This has important applications for catchment managers and policy makers, allowing them to determine how particular nutrient mitigation strategies will affect water quality and river ecology. Mike leads the CEH Thames Initiative, which is a long-term chemical and ecological monitoring programme extending from the Thames headwaters to its tidal limit. This programme provides a major platform for integrated water quality and ecological research. Email: mibo@ceh.ac.uk Bill Davies is Distinguished Professor of Plant Biology at Lancaster University, UK. He developed his interest in plants when working on the family farm in the southeast of Britain. He has a degree in Horticultural Science from Reading University and a PhD from Forestry and Botany from the University of Wisconsin, USA. For the whole of his professional career in the UK he has worked at Lancaster University, most recently in the Lancaster Environmental Centre. He has a general interest in interventions that might enhance global food security, while his research group focuses on understanding how crop plants cope with adverse environmental conditions. Davies is an ISI highly-cited author in Plant and Animal Sciences. In 2009, the lab won a Queen’s Award for Innovation for work on sustainable use of resources in agriculture and in June 2011, Davies was awarded a CBE for services to Science in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. He was elected corresponding member off the

8

American Society of Plant Biology in 2009, is an Honorary member of the Society for Experimental Biology, an Honorary Research Fellow at Rothamsted Research and is currently President of the Global Plant Council. Email: w.davies@lancaster.ac.uk Ian Dodd is Professor of Sustainable Agriculture at the Lancaster Environment Centre. His research aims to improve the sustainability of agriculture, with particular emphasis on the efficient use of water resources. Fundamental studies of how root-to-shoot signals are affected by the soil environment are exploited by (a) identifying genetic variation in crop water use efficiency (b) rootstock-mediated crop improvement (c) altering root architecture (d) different irrigation techniques and (e) applying plant growth promoting rhizobacteria and (f) applying different soil amendments derived from industrial waste streams. These techniques aim to understand the mechanisms by which plants sense changes in the soil biological, chemical and physical environment, how they communicate this information to the shoot to regulate water use, growth and crop yield, and how this knowledge can be exploited to maximize agricultural profit while sustainably using resources. He has published extensively on crop management techniques such as rootzone cooling in tropical aeroponics production, partial rootzone drying and rhizosphere engineering. Email: i.dodd@lancaster.ac.uk Dr Matthew Heard is a terrestrial ecologist at CEH. His main interests are to: i) understand the key drivers causing declines in wildlife; ii) develop and evaluate actions to halt or reverse these declines. He tackles these questions through experimentation, fieldwork, molecular techniques, analyses of large datasets, and modelling. Current research themes include interactions between agriculture and biodiversity, pollination ecology, ecosystem function, restoration ecology and plant community dynamics. He has made direct contributions to winning >£3.3 million of research funding in the last 7 years and is currently PI/co-I/mentor for a number of large grants funded by government/ NGOs/ research councils and industry. Results from his projects have had direct impacts on policy (e.g. GM cropping, agri-environment schemes). He is a member of Defra's Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE), NERC Peer Review College, BBSRC Panel of Experts and associate editor of two journals. He has authored/co-authored 84 papers, (h index score = 26). Email: mshe@ceh.ac.uk Prof. Kevin Jones is Distinguished Professor and Director of the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University. Kevin is an environmental chemist and is one of the most highly cited scientists in Environment and Ecology and has published nearly 600 peer-reviewed journal articles. He has conducted world leading research into the environmental sources, fate, behaviour and effects of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) over the last three decades. He has long-standing collaboration with the CAS Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry and is a co-founder of the International Research and Innovation Centre for the Environment (I-RICE). Current and future research interests include the cleaning of polluted urban land, building on a major UK Strategic Partnership Fund project in China with a pilot demonstration at Luzhou in Guangxi Province. Email: k.c.jones@lancaster.ac.uk

9

Prof. Silvia Lacorte is Head of the Department of Environmental Chemistry of IDAEA-CSIC and member of the Chemistry coordination area of CSIC. She is involved in the development of analytical methods based in mass spectrometric techniques for the determination of organic contaminants and to study their behavior in the environment. Studies are aimed to determine legacy or priority contaminants (pesticides, PAHs, PCBs, etc.) as well emerging toxic compounds (alkylphenols, flame retardants, plasticizers, pharmaceuticals, etc.). Monitoring and biomonitoring methods are undertaken to understand their occurrence and fate in water, soil/sediments, biota and to evaluate their toxicological effects and impact. She has participated or coordinated European or national projects. Prof. Lacorte has 165 articles published in SCI journals and an h-index of 42. She has been recently been appointed Editor in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. The research group is characterized by the field works undertaken, formation activity, and collaboration with national and international scientific teams. Email: silvia.lacorte@idaea.csic.es Yongtao Li is Professor and Vice Dean of the College of Natural Resources and Environment, South China Agricultural University. His research concerns soil biology – functioning and process of microbes and macrofauna under the condition of contaminant stress and different land uses – and soil chemistry – behaviour, cycling, speciation and availability of trace metals. His research aims to provide support for bioremediation of contaminated soils and food safety by enhanced microbial degradation of soil organic pollutants by earthworms and the inactivation of heavy metals by phosphate-solubilizing microorganisms. Email: yongtao@scau.edu.cn Yonglong Lu is a Professor at the Research Centre for the Eco-Environmental Sciences (RCEES) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research interests are ecological health impacts and risk assessment of emerging pollutants, sustainable watershed management, energy and environmental impacts, environmental management and emergency response. Dr. Lu is an elected Fellow of TWAS (The World Academy of Sciences); past President of Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE); Science Advisor, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN); Member of UNEP International Resource Panel; Vice President, Ecological Society of China; Chair, Committee on Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Chinese Society for Sustainable Development. He has published more than 250 papers in peer reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, Science Advances, Environment International, ES&T, and authored or co-authored 16 books. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Ecosystem Health and Sustainability jointly appointed by the Ecological Societies of America and China, Associate Editor of Science Advances, the founder and Associate Editor of Environmental Development: Trans-disciplinary Journal of SCOPE. He has obtained various awards and honors including the 2nd Prize of National Award for Advancement of Science and Technology, National Outstanding Young and Middle-aged Scientist, and SCOPE Distinguished Achievement Award. Email: yllu@rcees.ac.cn Dr. Chunling Luo works as a research professor in Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, CAS. She got her Ph.D from Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Year 2006 and was selected as a member of CAS One-hundred Talents Program in Year 2010. Her research interest is the

10

biogeochemistry of contaminant monitoring and controlling, including bioremediation of metals and organic pollutants contaminated soils based on plant-microbe interactions, and developing new molecular methods to identify the functional microorganisms responsible for organic pollutants degradation. Soil microbial ecology relating nutrient cycling and climate change is her recent interest. She published 67 papers in the international peer-reviewed journals and works as the PI for 3 research projects founded by NSFC. Email: clluo@gig.ac.cn Dr. Esmeralda Morillo is Head of the Department of Agrochemistry, Environmental Microbiology and Soil Conservation and Head of the Research Group Organic and Inorganic Pollutants in the Environment at IRNAS-CSIC. Her research field is mainly focused on the dynamics of chemicals used in agronomy (mainly pesticides), heavy metals and organic pollutants in the soil-water system, as well as the study and use of new materials and techniques that decrease the environmental impact of compounds which can reach both soil and water. Her research interests are: (1) amelioration of the impact of pesticides in the environment by implementation of several agronomic practices such as the development of controlled release systems of agrochemicals and the use of organic amendments for reduced leaching; (2) Development of techniques for soil remediation based on the use of environmentally friendly biodegradable chemicals that increase the bioavailability of oeganic contaminants and facilitate their biodegradation. Her primary interests for joint-research in the frame of the grant are on controlled release systems and soil remediation. Dr. Morillo has 103 articles published in top SCI journals and h-index of 26. She is also involved in formation activities and in the transfer of knowledge to potential industrial partners for joint-ventures. Email: morillo@irnase.csic.es Jun NIU is Associate Professor at the Center for Agricultural Water Research in China, China Agricultural University. His research fields including Watershed Hydrology, Regional ecohydrological impacts of climate change and Agricultural water management. His research grants include: hydrological responses for the inland river basins under changing environments. (Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities; 2015-2017; CNY 50o, 000; ongoing); investigation of hydrological processes in the middle and end of the 21st century for the Pearl River basin, South China (National Natural Science Foundation of China, Young Scientists Fund; 2014-2016; CNY 22o, 000; ongoing); study on impacts of climate change on the water resources of Hong Kong (Hong Kong Water Supplies Department (WSD) consultancy service, 2014–2015, Project manager & Co-investigator; HKD 1,20o, 000; completed). For future research his primary interests are: Interaction between water and ecosystem; the impacts of climate change on agricultural yields; and food security. Email: niuj@cau.edu.cn Tingping Ouyang is Associate Professor at GIGCAS. She is interested in research of surface geological environment, including natural process and anthropogenic influences. The methods of environmental magnetism, geochemical analysis, and application of remote sensing (RS) and geographical information system (GIS) are used through her research. Her current project include a NSFC project, a NSFC-Guangdong Joint Fund project, a Guangdong Province-Chinese Academy of Sciences comprehensive strategic cooperation project, and a

11

grant from Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In-depth discussion should be put on the safety of agricultural products through many aspects, including the influence of heavy metal on agricultural soil-crop system. The human process and its environmental effect for rapid economic growth regions, and study of the coupling mechanism of natural and human factors during environmental evolution will be interesting in future research. Email: oyangtp@gig.ac.cn Martin Parry is the Professor in Plant Science for Food Security within the Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC) at Lancaster University. Until September 2015 Martin was an Associate Director and Head of the Plant Biology and Crop Science Department of Rothamsted Research where he also directed the 20:20 Wheat® Institute Strategic Program. Martin wants his research to have a real impact on food security by increasing the yield of major crops whilst also increasing the efficiency of production and end use quality. His aim is to understand how yield and quality are determined by gene composition and sequences in different environments (e.g. drought and temperature stress). This will enable him to manipulate the appropriate molecular and biochemical controls to increase in crop performance in a predictable way for current and future environments. Martin is the Editor-in-Chief of Food and Energy Security, and Co-Editor for the Journal of Integrative Plant Biology. In 2014, Martin was awarded the China National Friendship Award by Vice Premier Ma Kai in Beijing. Email: m.parry@lancaster.ac.uk Francisco Pedrero Salcedo is a Senior Researcher at the Irrigation Department of CEBAS-CSIC in Murcia, Spain. His research concerns water science, irrigation and water management and agricultural plant science, including research and transference work regarding the reclaimed wastewater use in the irrigation. He has a PhD in Agricultural Engineering from Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena. Email: fpedrero@cebas.csic.es John Quinton is Professor of Soil Science and Research Director at the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University. He has a degree in Soil Science and a PhD in soil erosion and has spent the last 25 years researching soil processes and their links to environmental quality and food production. He is Executive Editor of the European Sciences Union’s journal SOIL. Email: j.quinton@lancaster.ac.uk Gwyn Rees is Science Area Lead for Water Resources at CEH, responsible for defining CEH’s water resources research and overseeing a portfolio of c.40 active projects having a value of approximately £4.5M annually. He also is a Section Head, with line-management responsibility for some 45 staff. Previously he was Director of Environmental Informatics, responsible for CEH’s environmental informatics R&D programme and the Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC). He was Head of the National River Flow Archive (NRFA) from 2006-2009 and before that (from 1993) an applied hydrologist, focussing on low flows, drought and water resources problems in Europe and South Asia. Gwyn is a hydrologist who specialises in regional low flows, droughts, water resources and

12

mountain hydrology. His hydrological expertise has been gained through his involvement in a wide range of commercial research projects in Europe and South Asia, for such clients as DFID, Defra, the Environment Agency, the European Commission, the European Environment Agency, Eurostat, Unilever and the World Bank. Gwyn maintains a strong interest in environmental informatics and hydrological data management. Email: hgrees@ceh.ac.cn Jianbo Shen works on the plant-soil interactions and focuses on root/rhizosphere nutrition and management for improving nutrient/water use efficiency and crop productivity with environmental resilience. He earned his Ph.D. from China Agricultural University; postdoc and the international academic experience were at The University of Western Australia, Hohenheim University, Wageningen University, Minnesota University and Lancaster University. He has coupled the techniques of plant-soil sciences, in combination with plant biology, to enhance our understanding of biological and chemical processes in the rhizosphere of legume and cereal crops under nutrient deficiency stresses or intensive farming systems and to improve the nutrient use efficiency and reduce pollution. He is also interested in the science underpinning food security, resource use efficiency as well as technology transfer and transformation of agriculture in China. He has got National Awards both for Natural Science and Technology Innovations and published over 50 peer-reviewed papers. Email: jbshen@cau.ac.cn Andy Sweetman is Senior Lecturer, Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC) & Research Fellow at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. Andy’s primary research interests involve the investigation the fate and behaviour of persistent organic pollutants on UK, European and global scales. Much of this research involves the use and development of mathematical models to determine the fate and behaviour of chemicals in the environment and to improve the risk assessment process. His research group are also involved in the development of novel sampling techniques and undertake measurement campaigns to provide datasets for model testing and validation. Email: a.sweetman@lancaster.ac.uk David Tyfield is Reader in Environmental Innovation & Sociology at the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University and Research Professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry (GIGCAS). He is Director of the International Research and Innovation Centre for the Environment (I-RICE), Guangzhou (a joint initiative between Lancaster and GIGCAS) and Co-Director of the Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe), Lancaster University. His research focuses on the interaction of political economy, social change and developments in science, technology and innovation, with a particular focus on issues of low-carbon transition in China, especially urban e-mobility as well issues of food security and ‘clean coal’. He is currently lead researcher for a UK ESRC-funded project with colleagues at CeMoRe, Sussex, SOAS, Tsinghua and CAS on ‘Low Carbon Innovation in China: Practice, Politics & Prospects’; and lead coordinator of the SEW-REAP programme. He is interested in research projects exploring novel ways to tackle complex socio-natural problems, including those regarding food and environment in China. Email: d.tyfield@lancaster.ac.uk

13

Tomas Undabeytia is a member of the Research Group “Inorganic and Organic pollutants in the Environment” at the IRNAS-CSIC. He has a solid background in the research field of dynamics of chemicals used in agronomy, heavy metals and organic pollutants, in the soil-water system (especially photolysis, sorption and leaching and modeling of these processes). My research interests are: (1) amelioration of the impact of pesticides in water bodies by implementation of several agronomic practices such as the development of controlled release systems of agrochemicals and the use of organic amendments for reduced leaching; (2) water treating, recovery from chemicals and recycling, with special focus on the development of new processes for water purification. My primary interests for joint-research in the frame of the grant are on controlled release systems and water purification. Dr. Undabeytia has 47 articles published in top journals of the SCI and h-index of 21. He is also involved in formation activities and in the transfer of knowledge to potential industrial partners for joint-ventures. Email: undabeyt@irnase.csic.es Simon Vaughan is Head of Grants & International Programmes at Rothamsted Research. The grants and international office contributes to the development and implementation of Institute strategy & policy concerning international alliances & initiatives and provide support for grant applications to both domestic and international funding schemes. Recent international efforts have focused on the establishment of the joint UK-China Centre for Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture (CSIA); the Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture (ASA) in Brazil and plans to consolidate Rothamsted’s activities in East Africa. I have also worked with several funding agencies to develop wider international initiatives including the International Wheat Yield Partnership and the European Network Coordinating Action in Plant Sciences (ERA-CAPS). I also work closely with EPSO and sit on the European Technology Platform (Plants for the future) Executive Committee. Email: simon.vaughan@rothamsted.ac.uk Dr Felix Wäckers has been working in the field of biocontrol and pollination for over 25 years focusing on novel non-chemical strategies for crop protection and crop management. He holds a PhD in entomology from Wageningen University and has held positions at USDA-ARS, ETH Zürich, and the Netherland’s Institute of Ecology. In October 2005 he accepted a position as the Director of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture at Lancaster University. Since 2009 he combines his academic work with the position of Director Research and Development at Biobest, an internationally leading company in the production of pollinators and biological control agents. Here he leads an international team of 28 researchers. His academic research focuses on strategies to optimize pollination and biocontrol services. Further areas of interest include non-target effects of GM crops. Publications include a total of 140+ peer reviewed articles, as well as many book chapters. Email: felix.wackers@biobest.be Jianwu Wang is Professor and Dean of the College of Natural Resources and Environment, South China Agricultural University. My research field is reduced N application and intercropping to build the sustainable farming system in tropical and sub-tropical region in China. I’m the PI of Environmental safety and ecological security project of SCAU, Circular agriculture models in Pearl River Delta project of Ministry of Science and Technology, China.

14

My interest in future joint research is to explore the ideal ecological agricultural models for paddy field, arid land and sloped land in tropical region in China. Email: wangjw@scau.edu.cn Yunpeng Wang received his BS in Geology from Lanzhou University, and his MS and PhD degrees in Remote Sensing and Geochemistry from the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (GIGCAS). He has been with GIGCAS since 1996 and currently he is a research professor at the State Key Laboratory of Organic Geochemistry (SKLOG). His main research interests are remote sensing applications on environment and geochemistry. He is expertizing in water quality remote sensing monitoring and watershed modeling for hydrologic and non-point pollution estimations. His team is dedicated to build a watershed modeling in the whole basin of Pearl River and now has a running model in four sub-basins including Dongjing, Beijiang, Xijiang and Liuxihe watersheds using SWAT and AGNPS. He has also studied the water resource supply and variations with climate change and land-use changes in watershed scale. He is seeking coupling watershed modeling and geochemical/isotopic tracing of nutrients and pollutants in Pearl River and estuary with Lancaster partners and EU students. Email: wangyp@gig.ac.cn Qi-Tang Wu is a Professor at the College of Natural Resources and Environment, South China Agricultural University. Since 1996 he has been a Chair Professor, Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, and was previously in the Department for Soil and Environmental Science. HIs research intersts include : Remediation of heavy metal contaminated soils; Treatment and recycling of municipal sewage sludge; Agricultural non-point sources pollution and In situ restoration of polluted waters. He has a Ph.D in Agricultural Resources & Environment and DEA Masters degree in Agronomy from the National Polytechnic Institute of Lorraine (INPL), France: He earned his BSc in Soil Science & Agro-chemistry at SCAU. Email: wuqitang@scau.edu.cn Guang-Guo Ying is a professor of environmental chemistry and ecotoxicology in State Key Laboratory of Organic Geochemistry, Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is also appointed as a principal research scientist in the CAS centre for Pearl River Delta Environmental Pollution and Control Research. He received his BSc from Zhejiang University (China) and PhD (Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology) from the University of Adelaide (Australia). He has worked as a research scientist at the University of Melbourne and CSIRO Land and Water (Australia) for many years. He was recruited by the Chinese Academy of Sciences through “100 Talents” program, and received “Distinguished Scholar” Award from the National Natural Science Foundation of China. His research interests focus on environmental contamination assessment and remediation technology, including the fate and effects of contaminants in the environment. He is currently conducting research in emerging science areas such as endocrine disrupting chemicals and pharmaceuticals and personal care products in the environment, and environmental issues associated with wastewater and biosolid reuse. He is interested in the development of chemical and biological tools for the risk assessment of contaminants in soil and water environments. Email: guang-guo.ying@gig.ac.cn; guangguo.ying@gmail.com.

15

Jing You is Professor at CAS Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry. My general research interests are in interdisciplinary areas linking chemistry and toxicology techniques to their environmental applications with the objective of understand ecological risk of environmental contaminants in aquatic ecosystem. I am primarily interested in addressing research questions about environmental fate and adverse effects of organic contaminants, with a particular focus on bioavailability and toxicity of current-use pesticides in sediment. Identifying the principal cause of toxicity in the presence of multiple stressors using toxicity identification evaluation techniques is also of my special interest. My current projects include understanding the influence factors of bioavailability of contaminants in sediment, evaluation of bioavailability and toxicity of organic contaminants by biomimetic techniques, and investigating joint toxicity of sediment-associated contaminants. Email: youjing@gig.ac.cn Fu-Suo Zhang is Director and Professor at the Centre for Resources, Environment and Food Security, China Agricultural University. He served as the past President of International Plant Nutrition Council, vice President of Soil Science Society of China, vice President of Plant Nutrition and Fertilizer Science Society of China, vice President, Academy Nature Resource of China, his research is mainly focused on how to realize high crop yield, high nutrient use efficiency and protect environment at the same time, in order to ensure food security and realize sustainable development in China. In last more than 20 years, he developed a series of integrated crop and nutrient management technologies to increase crop yield and improve nutrient use efficiency, while reduce environmental footprint significantly. Through the vast network and governmental actions the great changes have been made for transformation of agriculture from sole high input and output to high yield, high efficiency and environmental sound. He has got many national and international awards for Scientific Research, as well as Transfer of knowledge to farmers and fertilizer industry. He has published over 400 peer-reviewed papers, including the prestige Science, Nature and PNAS and got 2007 IFA International Crop Nutrition Award as well as 2014 Award for Agricultural Science from The World Academy of Science. Email: zhangfs@cau.edu.cn Gan Zhang is Professor and Deputy Director General at the CAS Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry. Dr Zhang graduated from Department of Geology, Nanjing University in 1987. He obtained is MSc and PhD degree in geochemistry from Nanjing University and Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (GIGCAS) in 1990 and 1995, respectively. He did his postdoctoral research in sedimentology in Reading University, UK. His research interest has been in the fate of organic pollutants in regional/global environment. Besides, he is coordinating a research group working in a wider area from environmental microbiology, atmospheric chemistry to radiocarbon analysis. His recent research focus includes: (i) regional biogeochemistry of persistent organic pollutants (POPs); (ii) compound-specific radiocarbon analysis and its application in ecology and environmental forensics; (iii) chemical pollution in Southeast/South Asia. Dr Zhang has published >240 papers in internationally peer-reviewed SCI journals, with a citation times of >6100 and an h index of 42 (ref to: http://www.researcherid.com/rid/C-3528-2012). Email: zhanggan@gig.ac.cn

16

Hao Zhang is Professor of Environmental Chemistry, Lancaster University, UK. Prof Zhang has 31 years of research experience in chemical speciation and the biogeochemistry of trace elements in aquatic systems. Her research has been undertaken in Qingdao, Brussels, Liverpool and Lancaster. She is the co-inventor of the technique of DGT (diffusive gradients in thin-films). Her recent and current work has maintained the research lead, and DGT-based work continues to set the agenda in the following research fields: (1) chemical speciation in aqueous environments, (2) dynamics of interactions between solution and solid phase in sediments and soils, (3) the role of microniches in determining chemical processes in sediments and (4) how the dynamics of soil processes affect uptake of solutes by plants. Grants (income exceeding £4,300,000) from NERC and EU have funded the solution and sediment work, while research on soils has been funded by BBSRC, EU and industry. She has supervised 27 PhD students and 18 postdocs. Her 175 peer-reviewed papers have received >500 citations per year in recent years (h-index 41). She served as member of NERC Peer Review College and associate editor of “Journal of Environmental Quality”. Email: h.zhang@lancaster.ac.uk Jianhua Zhang is currently the Director of the State Key Laboratory of Agrobiotechnology and Professor of Plant Biology in the School of Life Sciences, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Before joining CUHK, he was the Chair Professor and Head of Biology Department at Hong Kong Baptist University. He obtained his B Sc from Jiangsu Agricultural College in 1982 in China and PhD from Lancaster University in 1988 in UK. His research area is in plant stress physiology and water-saving cultivation of field crops. He is the associate editor of the Journal of Experimental Botany since 2009, and editor or associate editor of eight other peer-reviewed journals. He has won the President’s Award for Outstanding Performance in Scholarly Work at Hong Kong Baptist University and many other awards in China. In 2008, Jianhua Zhang was profiled by Nature magazine as one of the ‘Five Crop Researchers Who Could Change the World’. Email: jhzhang@cuhk.edu.hk Fangjie Zhao is a National “1000-Plan”Scholar and a Professor of environmental biology in Nanjing Agricultural University. He also holds a part-time position (Band G) at Rothamsted Research, U.K., where he has been working for over twenty years. His current research focuses on soil contamination and the impacts on food safety, an issue that has attracted much public attention in China. He leads a number of research projects funded by National Natural Science Foundation, Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Education of China. His research group uses multidisciplinary approaches to understand the factors that control the transformation and bioavailability of contaminants in soils and the pathways of contaminant accumulation by food crops. His previous work includes crop nutrition and the impacts on grain yield and quality, and biofortification of micronutrients for human nutrition. He has published over 220 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, and has an H-index of 65. Email: fangjie.zhao@rothamsted.ac.uk Zheng Zhou is an isotope geochemist at Lancaster Environment Centre. His research focuses on applying isotope techniques in understanding processes associated with generation, migration and accumulation of subsurface crustal fluids, including groundwater, oil and

17

natural gases. He is running a subsurface fluid isotope lab at LEC equipped with two start-of-the-art instruments – A magnetic sector multi-collector noble gas mass spectrometer and a quantum cascade laser clumped methane monitor. Zheng Zhou has been undertaking various work in China as part of his research into crustal fluids, e.g. tracing sources, pathways and fate of nutrients in river systems in the Pearl River Delta using geochemical tracers; identifying and quantifying formation and migration mechanisms of natural gases in Sichuan Basin. Zheng Zhou had extensive experiences on water quality and quantity management in China and previously worked on both provincial and national water projects. Email: z.zhou4@lancaster.ac.uk Xinguang Zhu is a Professor of Plant Systems Biology in the CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology of Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is also a member of the state Key Laboratory for Hybrid Rice Research. There are two major projects ongoing in Dr. Zhu's lab. One focuses on developing a systems model of crop growth and development, with rice as the model species. The goal of this project is to realistically simulate the major molecular, physiological and physical processes controlling the efficiency of energy conversion and nitrogen use efficiencies of crops. The second project focuses on studying evolution and development of C4 photosynthesis with the ultimate goal of engineering C4 photosynthesis into C3 crops. Email: xinguang.zhu@gmail.com; zhu3@uiuc.edu Dr Yongguan (Y-G) Zhu, Professor of Soil Environmental Sciences and Environmental Biology, the he is the director general of the Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He has been working on soil-plant interactions, with special emphasis on rhizosphere microbiology, biogeochemistry of nutrients, metals and emerging pollutants. Professor Zhu is a leader in taking multi-scale and multi-disciplinary approaches to soil and environmental problems. Before returning to China in 2002, he was working as a research fellow (Supported by the Royal Society London), the Queen's University of Belfast, UK (1994-1995); and a postdoctoral fellow in The University of Adelaide (1998-2002), Australia. He obtained his BSc in soil science from Zhejiang Agricultural University in 1989, and MSc in soil science from the Institute of Soil Science, CAS in 1992, and then a PhD in environmental biology from Imperial College, London in 1998. Dr Zhu is currently the co-editor-in-chief of Environmental Technology & Innovation (Elsevier), associate editor of Environment International (Elsevier), and editorial members for a few other international journals. He is a scientific committee member for the ICSU program on Human Health and Wellbeing in Changing Urban Environment, and served for nine years as a member of Standing Advisory Group for Nuclear Application, International Atomic Energy Agency (2004-2012). Professor Zhu is the recipient of many international and Chinese merit awards, among them including TWAS Science Award 2013, National Natural Science Award 2009; Professor Zhu has published over 200 papers in international journals, and these publications have attracted over 9000 citations (Web of Science). Email: ygzhu@rcees.ac.cn

18