About Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences

Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences

The Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences (Chinese: 山西省农业科学院) was Shanxi province's agricultural research academy, based in Taiyuan. In October 2019 the Shanxi Provincial Party Committee and Provincial Government merged the academy with Shanxi Agricultural University into a new Shanxi Agricultural University, which now styles itself "Shanxi Agricultural University (Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences)." The academy therefore no longer exists as a standalone institution; its institutes, campuses and research network continue as the academy half of the merged university-academy, including 20 directly affiliated research institutes and centres across Shanxi. Its official presence is through the merged institution's website, sxau.edu.cn. Because the academy was merged in 2019, this profile is written substantially in the past tense for the standalone academy and in the present tense for what continues.

The academy as Shanxi's provincial agricultural research system

As a provincial academy of agricultural sciences, the Shanxi academy was the research arm of Shanxi's agriculture: a Taiyuan-based headquarters with specialist institutes distributed across the province, serving a largely dryland, loess-plateau farming region. The scale of that system is best seen in what the merger carried over. The merged university's official About page states that it has two campuses — the Taigu Campus and the Taiyuan Longcheng Campus — and research institutes all over the province, among which there are 20 directly affiliated research institutes (centres). The Taiyuan Longcheng Campus is the academy's Taiyuan base, as the directory source record notes. The institutes spread across Shanxi — from millet research to high-latitude crops in the north — are overwhelmingly the former academy's network, now directly affiliated to the merged university.

The October 2019 merger decision

In October 2019, with a view to the overall reform and development of higher education and agricultural research in Shanxi, the Shanxi Provincial Party Committee and Government decided to merge Shanxi Agricultural University with the Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences into a new Shanxi Agricultural University. The university's president's message describes the same event as a joint reform: in October 2019 the university and the academy were jointly reformed and a new Shanxi Agricultural University was established, gathering two important agricultural scientific research forces committed to the development of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers." The merged institution is co-sponsored by the Shanxi Provincial Government and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

The partner university brought a century of history to the union. Shanxi Agricultural University traces itself to the private Mingxian School founded in 1907 — founded, in Wikipedia's account, by a group associated with Oberlin College, including financier H. H. Kung — which became Shanxi Agricultural College as a public institution in 1951 and was renamed Shanxi Agricultural University in 1979, becoming one of the national key universities at the beginning of reform and opening up. That history belongs to the university side; the academy side contributed the provincial research institute system.

What the merged institution looks like

The new Shanxi Agricultural University (Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences) encompasses eight academic fields — agriculture, science, engineering, economics, management, humanities, law and art — offering 71 undergraduate specialties, with 22 teaching units alongside the 20 directly affiliated research institutes and centres. It hosts one national key discipline, in animal genetics, breeding and reproduction, and nine provincial key disciplines including agricultural engineering, crop science, horticulture, agricultural resources and environment, plant protection, animal husbandry, veterinary medicine, forestry and grassland science, as summarised by the Sino-German Agricultural Centre. The academy institutes sit within that structure as the research wing, while the teaching units carry degree education — the same science-education integration pattern seen in other Chinese provincial academy mergers of the period.

Institutes of the academy network: millet

The academy's specialist institutes each carry long histories. The Millet Research Institute was formerly the Jin-Ji-Lu-Yu Border Bureau of Agriculture and Forestry, established in 1942; in 1979 it was reassigned to the Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences and became the first professional millet research institute in China; in December 2019, following the joint reform, it became a research institute directly under Shanxi Agricultural University. Its own history page says that over 80 years it developed from an agricultural experimental farm into a crop research institute with strong teams, fruitful achievements and distinct local characteristics. Millet — a staple dryland crop of north China — is a signature Shanxi research subject, and the institute's academy decades, 1979 to 2019, were central to that record.

Institutes of the academy network: germplasm, high-latitude crops and animal husbandry

The Center for Agricultural Genetic Resources Research was initially established in 1979, preceded by the academy's Research Office of Crop Germplasm Resources and Institute of Crop Germplasm Resources; in June 2020, after the merger, it was renamed the Center for Agricultural Genetic Resources at Shanxi Agricultural University. It is described as the first provincial crop germplasm resources institute in China and the only such institute in the Loess Plateau area, and it hosts the Minor Crops Research Center (Taiyuan) sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

The High Latitude Crops Institute, founded in 1949 as the Chahar Provincial Datong Farm, was placed under the Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1979 and is now a professional provincial agricultural research institute for northern Shanxi under the merged university. The academy's Institute of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine, established in 1958 at 150 Pingyang South Road, Xiaodian District, Taiyuan, was the province's only provincial comprehensive animal husbandry and veterinary research institute, as the directory source record notes. Other academy units show the same pattern of deep local roots, such as the ecological agriculture and animal husbandry station at Youyu, which passed through county and academy affiliations from 1952 onward before joining the new university in 2019.

Integration inside colleges as well as institutes

The merger reached inside teaching units too. The College of Life Sciences records that in October 2019, when the university and the academy were jointly reformed, the college was integrated with the Biotechnology Research Center of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences to establish a new College of Life Sciences. Academy research capacity was thus folded both into standalone directly affiliated institutes and into university colleges, depending on the discipline — biotechnology joining a college, while crop, millet, germplasm and animal institutes continued as institutes.

Serving Shanxi agriculture and Shanxi Nonggu

Both predecessor institutions defined their mission as serving "agriculture, rural areas and farmers," and the merged institution states that purpose plainly: to strengthen cooperation with local governments and enterprises, integrate the resources of research institutions throughout the province, and build a new scientific and technological demonstration and promotion system. A concrete focus is the Jinzhong National Agricultural High-tech Industry Demonstration Zone — Shanxi Nonggu — approved in 2019, the same year as the merger. The university's About page states that after the zone's approval, SXAU is indispensable in constructing it as a national first-class modern agricultural highland of innovation, industry, talent and rural reform forerunner, and the president's message commits the university-academy to serving the zone's construction together with high-quality agricultural development and rural revitalisation in Shanxi. The academy's province-wide institute network is the delivery mechanism for that ambition.

The academy's continuing name

Unlike a simple absorption, the Shanxi merger preserved the academy's name in the institution's formal style: Shanxi Agricultural University (Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences). The president's message is issued in that dual name, greeting teachers, researchers, alumni and supporters of "our university and academy," and it speaks of generations of "SXAUers and SAASers" — university people and academy people — who together composed the institution's contributions to agricultural development in Shanxi and the whole country. Publications, institutes and centres that trace to the academy therefore continue to carry its identity within the merged body.

How to read the academy's record today

Researchers tracing the Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences should look in two places: the pre-2020 literature under the academy and its named institutes, and the post-2019 record of Shanxi Agricultural University, its 20 directly affiliated research institutes and centres, and its Taiyuan Longcheng Campus. Institute histories published by the merged university — for millet, germplasm resources, high-latitude crops and others — explicitly narrate their academy years between their earlier foundings and the 2019 reform, making the academy's institutional memory unusually well documented for a merged provincial academy.

Significance

The Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences was, for decades, the organised agricultural research system of a demanding dryland province: millet, minor crops and germplasm for the Loess Plateau, high-latitude crops for the north, and the province's only comprehensive animal husbandry and veterinary institute in Taiyuan. Its October 2019 merger into Shanxi Agricultural University did not end that system; it rehoused it — 20 directly affiliated institutes and centres, a Taiyuan campus, and the academy name itself — inside a co-sponsored university that now presents the union as a driving force for rural revitalisation and agricultural modernisation in Shanxi.