About Institute of Special Animal and Plant Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences

Institute of Special Animal and Plant Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences

The Institute of Special Animal and Plant Sciences (ISAPS) is the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) institute in Changchun, Jilin Province, in northeast China. It researches special economic animals and plants — the academy's mandate for specialty species outside mainstream livestock and crops — including deer farmed for velvet antler, fur animals such as mink, fox and raccoon dog, and specialty plants including ginseng, American ginseng and cold-climate grapes. The institute is listed by the CAAS Graduate School among the academy's institutes and maintains its own website. Its address in published research is Juye Street No. 4899, Changchun 130112.

The institute's name has evolved with its field: it appears in the literature as the Institute of Special Economic Animal and Plant Sciences and, in earlier decades, as the Institute of Special Wild Economic Animals and Plants of CAAS. By any name it is the national research home for the animal and plant species that Chinese agriculture classifies as "special" — high-value, regionally concentrated and scientifically distinct from the staple species handled by the academy's mainstream institutes.

Key laboratories

ISAPS hosts the Key Laboratory of Special Economic Animal Genetic Breeding and Reproduction of the Ministry of Agriculture and the State Key Laboratory for Molecular Biology of Special Economic Animals, as well as the Jilin Provincial Key Laboratory for Molecular Biology of Special Economic Animals. Those platforms define the institute's scientific centre of gravity: the genetics, breeding, reproduction and molecular biology of special economic animals. Its animal research is governed by an institutional animal care committee — studies cite approvals such as protocol ISAPSAEC-2022-62M and the institute's committee review of work at its fur animal breeding base — and its laboratories work to the standards of the CAAS guide for the care and use of laboratory animals.

Velvet deer germplasm

Deer are the institute's flagship animals. China has 21 deer species, and sika deer and red deer are the main velvet deer, farmed for pilose antler, a high-value product of traditional medicine and the health industry. ISAPS has established a comprehensive velvet deer germplasm resource pool containing 4,500 sika deer living resources, 7,331 frozen semen samples, 150 tissue samples, 180 somatic cell samples and nearly 39,000 blood and DNA samples, together with more than 10,000 preserved gene sequences across genome, transcriptome and proteome data; the chromosome-level genome of the sika deer has been assembled with the institute's participation. For red deer, about 18,000 blood samples and about 30,000 frozen semen samples have been collected. The resource bank is designed to provide material for innovation in velvet deer germplasm. Among the breeds in its history, the Shuangyang sika deer is recorded as the first velvet-used variety in China, selected and bred through large-scale pure breeding over 23 years and introduced around the country; by the 1960s the average velvet antler yield of Shuangyang sika deer already exceeded one kilogram.

Fur animal research

Fur animals are the institute's second major animal programme. China is one of the world's largest fur producers, and the institute has long advised on the sector: a 2010 United States Department of Agriculture report recorded its experts' estimates of national mink, fox and raccoon dog inventories and their assessment that China had become the world's biggest fur production and processing centre. The institute introduced the white raccoon dog variety in 1982 and renamed it the "Jilin white raccoon" in 1990. Its researchers have evaluated the genetic diversity and population structure of five colour populations of farmed mink in China using double-digest restriction site-associated DNA sequencing, addressing inbreeding concerns in a sector built largely on imported breeding stock; thirteen mink breeds are officially recognised in China, seven domestically fostered and six introduced. Institute scientists have also studied mink reproduction and nutrition, including faecal progestin concentrations as an indicator of reproductive success in American mink at the institute's research farm, and dietary protein levels and nursing performance in lactating mink at its fur animal breeding base in northeast China.

Specialty plants: ginseng and medicinal crops

On the plant side, the institute works on the specialty crops of northeast China. Jilin is China's largest ginseng-producing province, and institute researchers study Panax ginseng and American ginseng (Panax quinquefolium), including the transformation of ginsenosides into rare ginsenosides by different processing methods and their antitumour effects, in work published with pharmaceutical engineering partners. Institute work also covers the toxicology and risk assessment of metals in the ginseng-growing environment of Jilin, and the processing chemistry of traditional medicinal plants such as Platycodon grandiflorum, whose root is a traditional Chinese herbal medicine. This plant programme gives the institute a second, botanical identity alongside its animal science: the medicinal and specialty crops that share the "special" classification in Chinese agricultural statistics.

Cold-climate grapes

The institute is also a long-standing breeder of the Amur grape, Vitis amurensis, the cold-climate wine grape of northeast Asia. Since the 1950s, the institute has bred several V. amurensis cultivars, including 'Beibinghong' and 'Beiguohong' and the 'Zijing' series, recorded in comparative studies of the berries and wines of V. amurensis and its interspecific hybrids. Breeding grapes that survive northeast China's winters without burial is a distinctive regional research problem, and the institute's decades of work on it make it a reference centre for cold-hardy viticulture alongside its animal programmes.

Molecular biology and wider research

The State Key Laboratory for Molecular Biology of Special Economic Animals anchors fundamental work that reaches beyond the specialty species themselves: institute researchers have published, for example, on long non-coding RNA regulation of myogenic differentiation in cell and developmental biology, and on the plant pan-genome as a tool for precision breeding, in addition to toxicology research on metal exposure mechanisms edited from the institute in international journals. Such work shows the institute's laboratories operating at the molecular frontier of animal and plant science while remaining organised around its specialty-species mission, funded in part through the Science and Technology Innovation Project of CAAS, including a dedicated ASTIP project for the institute.

Regional base and industry role

The institute's Changchun base places it in the centre of the northeast region where China's deer farming, fur animal production and ginseng cultivation are concentrated. Its experimental facilities include a research farm where mink studies are conducted under natural photoperiod and temperature, and a fur animal breeding base in the northeast (recorded at 44.02° N, 126.15° E) used for nutrition and breeding experiments. For the industries it serves — deer velvet, fur, ginseng and cold-climate wine — ISAPS supplies the functions a national institute provides: germplasm conservation on a national scale, breed evaluation and improvement, genetic and molecular research, and expert assessment of production and resources that government and industry reports cite.

Position in the CAAS system

Within CAAS, ISAPS occupies the niche that mainstream institutes do not: where the Institute of Animal Sciences covers cattle, pigs and poultry science, ISAPS covers the special economic animals — deer, mink, fox, raccoon dog and their peers — and the special plants, from ginseng to Amur grapes, that accompany them in northeast agriculture. Its combination of a national velvet deer germplasm bank holding tens of thousands of samples, ministry and state key laboratories for special animal genetics and molecular biology, and seven decades of cultivar and breed work since the 1950s makes it the definitive Chinese research institution for its unusual and economically distinctive corner of agriculture.