The trend towards the future is green plant sciences
Close collaboration with Wageningen University has helped the Wuhan Institute of Virology develop into a world-class laboratory and enables ongoing scientific exchanges between the two institutes. Trust may well be the most important result to emerge from the long collaboration between the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in central China, and Wageningen University. “In science, trust is crucial,” says Professor Hu Zhihong in her office at the Institute, which is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “You need to be able to trust one another’s lab results. After so many years of working together, we know exactly what each of us can do and we trust one another’s work without question. That makes it easy to focus on science and on what we want to achieve together, instead of having to deal with side issues.” Tea pests Professor Hu’s relationship with the Wageningen University Laboratory of Virology started in 1993, when she obtained her PhD there with research on the use of the baculovirus to fight tea pests. “Back then,” she says, “the laboratory in Wuhan was very poorly equipped, so I went to the Netherlands for training.” Professor Hu returned to Wuhan in 1998 not just with a PhD, but with a plan she had developed with Professor Just Vlak, her supervisor in Wageningen, to build a joint laboratory in Wuhan. “Wageningen helped us a lot in the initial stages. We modelled our laboratory after theirs. We were already receiving funding from the China Exchange Programme.” 41