Recently, the Institute has made a major breakthrough in the project initiation for “973 Program”. After we have submitted the application, the annual project of 2013 entitled “Formation Mechanism and Prevention & Control for Fungal Toxins during the Storage of Main Grain Products” (2013CB127800) has been approved by MOST. Dr. Liu Yang of the Institute acts as the chief scientist for this project.  

 

    Fungal toxins are a huge threat to food security in China and China invests trillions of funds for 1% of increase in food production each year. However, about 21 million tons of grain is lost due to fungus, accounting for 4.2% of the total grain production. At the same time, food pollution from fungal toxins had led to many safety accidents, posing a major threat to the health of human and livestock in China and constraining the foreign trade of agro-products. In order to guarantee food safety and grain safety and safeguarding national economic interests, efforts need to be made to conduct studies on the formation mechanism and prevention & control for fungal toxins during the storage of grain products, realize effective monitoring and warning of fungal toxins, and prevent them from causing harms, and establish a green technical system for fungal toxin prevention & control based on the characteristics of grain storage in China. 

 

    The Institute has taken the application for the “973 Program” as a great opportunity to meet the major national needs by conducting systematic breakdown and classification for the technical issues related to fungal toxin research, focusing on both the overall situation and specific issues in the fundamental work, fundamental studies and key technical breakthroughs. As a result, this research field has received support from the “Dedicated Projects for National Fundamental Work”, “S&T Support Program”, and “Dedicated Projects for Industry S&T Research” as well as other national projects in recent periods. Meanwhile, the Institute has won the right to host the International Conference on Fungal Toxins for 2014 and the chairman is Dr. Liu Yang, chief scientist for “973 Program”. Besides, the fungal toxin disease research team led by Dr. Dai Xiaofeng won the “MOA Award of Outstanding Agricultural Research Talents and Innovative Teams for 2012”.