Founded in 1938, Yunnan Agricultural University was formerly known as College of Agriculture, Yunnan University. It was listed as a Yunnan Provincial Key University in 1993, a doctoral degree authorization unit in 2003 and a post-doctoral Scientific research flow station in 2007. The university has 1,813 in-service teachers, including more than 700 teachers with senior titles. It has 1 academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, 4 national high-level talent candidates, 21 people enjoying State Council subsidies, 19 people enjoying provincial government subsidies, and more than 200 teachers, outstanding and innovative talents in Yunnan Province. The university also has 1 national science and technology innovation team, 14 provincial science and technology innovation teams, 2 provincial philosophy and social science innovation teams, and 13 university science and technology innovation teams. The university owns 2 advanced groups in the national education system, 1 advanced group for national professional and technical personnel, 9 members of College Teaching Guidance Committee of the Ministry of Education, and 1 evaluation experts in the State Science and Technology Award.
Established in April 2006, the Tea Academy of Yunnan Agricultural University has developed into an educational and technological service system covering the entire industrial chain from “tea garden” to “tea cup” after more than ten years’ efforts, playing a guiding role in supporting the development of the tea industry and cultivating industrial talents. The Tea Academy has created an innovative team focusing on the tea factor and tea efficacy research featuring with Pu’er tea. supported by some provincial and ministerial institutes, like the key laboratory of Pu’er Tea Science affiliated to Ministry of Education, the scientifically Observational and Experimental Station focusing on tea plant and tea processing of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Intelligent Engineering Research Center focusing on organic tea industry in Yunnan Province, the key laboratory of Intelligent Organic Tea Garden Construction in universities of Yunnan province, the Key Laboratory of Crop Production and Smart Agriculture of Yunnan Province, and the Tea Deep Processing Center of Yunnan. The academy has presided over and accomplished the national “11th Five-Year plan” support project “Research and Demonstration of Key Technologies for the industrialization of Yunnan Characteristic Tea”, and takes more than 30 national, provincial and ministerial teaching and scientific research projects, such as the “industry system construction of agricultural modernization, the tea”, “national feature specialty - tea science”, “mechanism of the impact of yunnan Pu’er tea oxidation resistance on high voltage pulse electric field”, “research of yunnan Pu’er tea polyphenols special composition, molecular structure and antioxidant activity”, “research on tea of solid-state fermentation process and the source of proteome”, “study on the interaction mechanism between theabrownin and cell membrane of Pu’er tea” and “Study on the regulation of cell receptor signal response by Pu’er tea factors”.
Named by Yunnan Provincial Development and Reform Commission, Yunnan Intelligent Engineering Research Center of Organic Tea Industry is the 13th Provincial Engineering Research Center in 2019 in Yunnan, declared by Yunnan Agricultural University (YAU) in the lead. During the construction period, two research and development platforms, including basic data monitoring platform for tea gardens and comprehensive service platform for monitoring and tracing tea industry chain, will be built as a way to develop key technologies to realize intelligence and digitization of organic tea in Yunnan. Intelligent management demonstration base of organic tea garden will be established to carry out research on intelligent management and integration of whole production process of organic tea industry and make breakthroughs in key generic technologies such as organic and sustainable production. The center provides technology and talent for economic transformation and upgrading of organic tea industry in Yunnan Province, improves the key technical level of intellectualization of Yunnan organic tea, sets standards for planting and processing of organic tea and introduce traceability system to achieve industrialization of whole industry, thus set up a centralized platform, characterized by “production, learning, research and application” of intelligent organic tea industry to provide various resources to talents. The Engineering Center currently has four talents from the Ten Thousand Talents Program in Yunnan Province, including two Yunling Scholars, two Industrial Technology Leaders, two outstanding teachers, one Scientist mainly studying Pu’er Tea in the Modern Industrial System of the Ministry of Agriculture, one foregoer in the young and middle-aged academic and technical fields in Yunnan Province, one leader in the data-driven software engineering technology innovation team in Yunnan Province, and two reserve academic and technical leaders in Yunnan Agricultural University. And one technical innovation team for intelligent tea industry in YAU was established.
The Yunnan Research Center of Engineering Technology for Tea Deep Processing is the second batch of Yunnan Research Centers of Engineering Technology recognized by the Yunnan Science and Technology Agency in 2010, and is jointly declared by Yunnan Agricultural University and Pu’er tea Research Institute. In December 2012, it passed the acceptance of the Agency and the construction was completed. The center focuses on the research frontiers in the field of science and technology of international tea efficacy. It studies the efficacy and health functions of tea. With the relationship between tea ingredients and health effects as the core, it conducts basic research on the structure and application of tea (especially Pu’er tea) factors, and explores the effects of tea factors and its mechanism of regulating metabolic immunity. On this basis, new products and new technologies are developed to build a discipline system for the efficacy of tea factors. It is a comprehensive organization of scientific research, design and industrial development integrating research, design, development, achievement transfer, technical consultation, information dissemination, education and training. At present, the center has 102 directly engaged in R&D personnel, including 11 professors (accounting for 10.78%), 3 part-time professors (2.94%), 18 associate professors (17.65%), and 18 lecturers (17.65%), 10 PhD students (9.80%), 32 postgraduates (31.37%), and 10 undergraduates (9.80%). The center has good experimental conditions such as scientific research facilities and equipment. The laboratory area is more than 1,000 square meters, and the total value (original value) of scientific research instruments exceeds 10 million yuan. In recent years, systematic research has been carried out on the key technical issues that restrict the development of Pu’er tea industry, such as the lack of scientific basis for the health effects of Pu’er tea and the short industrial chain, and important technological innovations have been made.
