Prof. Caspar C. C. Chater is the head of Plant Resources Research at the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG), Kew, Richmond, UK. By harnessing the natural diversity of plant traits, he aims to help strengthen sustainable pulse agriculture for a hotter and drier world. In addition to exploring crop genetic diversity, he hopes to use targeted molecular approaches to pre-breed underutilized crops and crop wild relatives. He used to work as a PDRA at the Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, from 2012 to 2015, then as a postdoctoral fellow from 2015 to 2017. Since 2017, he has been a researcher at the UNAM Campus Morelos, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Cuernavaca, Mexico. His research interests include botany, crop productivity, plant water loss, plant stress, plant physiology, plant development, stomata and environmental signalling.
Prof. Fuqiang Yu earned his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China, in 2002 and 2007, respectively. He is a senior engineer, a master’s tutor, and the deputy director of the Southwest China Germplasm Bank of Wild Species. Additionally, he is a young scholar of regional development of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a reserve talent for technological innovation leaders in Yunnan Province. He concurrently serves as the rotating chair of the International Mycorrhizal Edible Fungi Conference and the deputy director of the Yunnan Key Laboratory of Fungal Diversity and Green Development, as well as a national scientific and technological achievement evaluation expert, Guizhou Province Government targeted poverty alleviation consulting expert, and Yunnan Province plateau characteristic modern agriculture expert consultant. His research interests include edible mushrooms and ectomycorrhiza.
Prof. Dong Liu earned his M.Sc. degree from Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China, in 2012, and his Ph.D. degree from University of Bodenkultur Wien, Wien, Austria, in 2016. He is currently working as a master’s tutor at the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China. He has won multiple awards. In 2012, he won the national first prize of the National Doctoral Program Scholarship (CSC) for the Construction of High-Level Universities. In 2013, he won the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) scholarship. In 2018, he was awarded as the “Light of the West” young scholar of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Moreover, he has earned the special prize for composite ecological cultivation of edible fungi, improvement of people’s livelihood and ecological improvement in 2021. His research interests include soil proteins, microbial diversity, drying–rewetting and microbial function.
