The Collaborative Innovation Center of Research on Crop Gene Resources (hereafter referred to as the Center) has been co-founded by Nanjing Agricultural University as the initiator, by Beking University, Huazhong Agricultural University, and Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences as the core members, and by CAS Shanghai Institutes of Biological Sciences, CAS Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, CAAS Institute of Cotton Research, and CAAS Institute of Oil Crop Research as cooperators, and was approved by Ministry of Education in 2014.

  The Center consists of one platform and three branches, organizes research on six major crops by collaboratively exploring important issues in basic theories and cutting-edge technologies, such as formation and domestication of crop gene resources, the molecular basis and regulation network of the major character formation in crops, and molecular designing in elite germplasm improvement, aims at publishing high-level papers and breeding new crop varieties that meet the demand in agricultural production in China, and eventually form a collaborative research system of "six longitudinal research orientations, three crosswise research directions and one output". The existing superior resources will be gathered and input will be focused on key projects so as to provide world-class research conditions and innovation platforms. Open recruitment will be carried out to hire about 40 principal investigators (PI) to form research teams that are internationally competitive in the frontier of biology of crop gene resources. Reform will be implemented in science and technology mechanism and talent cultivation mechanism in order to form internationally compatible, comfortable and stable sci-tech culture and talent cultivation environment. Collaborative innovation will be performed in undertaking important research programs in crop science so as to produce significant results that support and promote the farm industry. In general, we plan to spend five to ten years in constructing the Center with a pluralistic, integrative, dynamic and sustainable mode of collaborative innovation so that it will become a world-class plateau of academic innovation in research on crop gene resources, a base of cultivating high-level innovative talents, and a leader in research on and development of improve crop varieties with internationally advanced contribution to the agricultural industry.