Сюн Ю-Кан

Professor You-Cai Xiong is an agricultural ecologist and focuses on the agricultural ecosystem, food security and its sustainability. He is currently a full-time professor in Lanzhou University, northwest China. He is current director of Gansu Dryland Agricultural Equipment Industry Technology Center, and the director of Engineering Research Center of the Ministry of Education for Dryland Agriculture and Ecosystem Conservation of China. As the head of the Agricultural Green Innovation Base in Gansu Province, he is also a full-time scientist of the State Key Laboratory of Herbage Improvement and Grassland Agroecosystem, Lanzhou University. His main research field is agricultural ecology and sustainability science. He was promoted to professor (agricultural ecology) at Lanzhou University in 2007 and has been working ever since. He has an excellent record of publishing papers and has been selected for the Global Top Scientists in Botany and Agronomy (Research.com) and Elsevier Highly Cited Scientist. Serving as the chief editor or editorial board member of multiple international academic journals.

Over last 27 years, he has published over 400 papers or books (chapters), 253 of which were published in international peer-reviewed journals (others in Chinese journals with English abstract). He has been engaged in fundamental research and technology innovation in agricultural resource conservation and food security in global semiarid and arid areas. Since 2007, he also aimed to enhance the research and extension of agricultural water management and green production regarding small household farmers in developing countries such as Kenya, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia. The population of farmer trainees under his teaching and instruction has been up to over 100,000 person times in developing countries. The grain yield of staple crops was improved averagely by over 99% as a result of the introduced low-input, environment-friendly and high-output technologies in Kenya and Pakistan. His great efforts made key contributions to the SDGs proposed by UNEP. Since 2011, he has established sound collaborations with the universities and institutions and received more than 50 young scientists from Pakistan, including MSc students, PhD students and postdoc fellows from Kenya, Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Malaysia and Vietnam etc. In addition to conducting basic research, he also devoted a lot of time to promoting water-saving agricultural technologies in arid areas to developing countries. The practical cultivation technology developed has the advantages of low input, high efficiency (high yield and efficiency), simple operation, and good environmental friendliness. It has been widely recognized and environmentally friendly by farmers in the East African Plateau and Pakistan regions, and has been referred to as 4E technology by Dr. Levis, a partner of the United Nations Environment Programme, and Professor Ashraf, an academician of TWAS