Recently, Professor M. Aslam Baig, Secretary-General of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences, sent a congratulatory letter to Professor Xiong Youcai of Lanzhou University (LZU),celebrating his election as a foreign member of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences. This marks the first time a faculty member specializing in ecology at LZU has been elected as a foreign academician.
Over the past two decades, Professor Xiong Youcai has been dedicated to promoting China’s northwest dryland water-saving agricultural technologies and ecological conservation techniques to Pakistan and several African countries along the Belt and Road. His groundbreaking work in the field of dryland agricultural ecology has addressed common issues such as food security and sustainable ecological development in the recipient countries. Since 2010, Professor Xiong Youcai has collaborated with his counterparts in Pakistan to make original contributionsin areas such as water-saving and high-yield cultivation in dryland agriculture, plastic film mulching and green production, energy conservation and carbon reduction in agriculture. He hassuccessively completed several international cooperativeprojects, conducted technological research and development as well as demonstrations in Pakistan, which has facilitated the localization and industrialization of these technologies. Over the past five years, Professor Xiong, in collabration with his Pakistani counterparts, has published 48 papers in high-quality international journals and co-authored two monographs.
