On January 23, Chen Weiquan, Party Leadership Group Member and Director of the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau of Lanshan District, Rizhao City, and his delegation visited the laboratory for inspection and exchange, and on behalf of the district government signed with the laboratory an agreement on jointly building the Rizhao Experimental Station and Application-Oriented Base of the National Key Laboratory of Tea Plant Germplasm Innovation and Resource Utilization, together with a cooperation agreement on promoting the high-quality development of the tea industry in Lanshan District. Professor Wan Xiaochun, Director of the laboratory, and Shan Guolei, Deputy Director of the Social Cooperation Office, attended the signing ceremony.

Wan Xiaochun extended a warm welcome to Chen Weiquan and his delegation. He noted that the tea industry is a distinctive and advantageous agricultural industry in Lanshan District, with broad development prospects and a profound cultural heritage. The laboratory will give full play to its strengths in research and talent, continuously send experts to Lanshan District to provide technical assistance, provide scientific and technological support for the development of Lanshan's tea industry, help local tea enterprises raise their level of modern and specialized processing, and promote the high-quality development of the tea industry in Lanshan District.

Chen Weiquan said that Lanshan District's tea industry is at a critical stage of transformation and upgrading and urgently needs scientific and technological support and innovation-driven development. He hoped that the laboratory would strengthen scientific and technological empowerment of Lanshan's tea industry, driving tea production rapidly toward intelligentization; continuously strengthen variety selection and breeding to develop distinctive and advantageous varieties suited to the local ecology; help improve the tea industry structure, build up distinctive categories such as Huangda tea in particular and promote the coordinated development of multiple tea types; and enhance the management of green pest control in Lanshan's tea gardens, extend the industrial chain, and promote cost reduction and efficiency improvement in the tea industry.

This signing marks a new stage in the cooperation between the two sides. Next, they will carry out in-depth cooperation in areas such as the utilization of tea plant germplasm resources, industrial technology upgrading and talent cultivation, jointly promoting the high-quality development of the tea industry in Lanshan District and contributing to rural revitalization and agricultural modernization. (Text/Photos/Editor: Hui Hao; First review: Guan Zhenyu; Final review: Zhang Xianlin)