The livestock modern biological breeding team of IMU is recognized by the Ministry of Education as one of the second group of Huang Danian Style Teachers Team of Universities in China, as is announced in the Ministry’s website lately.
Based itself on the State Key Laboratory of Reproductive Regulation & Breeding of Grassland Livestock, the livestock modern biological breeding team of IMU focuses on the research of high and new technologies of the reproductive regulation and biological breeding of grassland livestock, particularly cattle and sheep. A steady research team with clearly defined orientation and the capability of undertaking key national scientific and technological research projects has been forged gradually in the process of completing key national and regional scientific research projects over the years. The main fields of research of the team at the moment cover embryo engineering, gene editing and biological breeding of cattle and sheep. In the meantime, the significant achievements in the building of educational and teaching systems, the building of the team of faculty members and public services provide strong guarantee for the steady and healthy development of the team and the upgrading of quality of the talents cultivated.
In 2016, the team of Prof. Li Guangpeng first introduced the embryos of East Friensian sheep and Dairy Meade sheep, breeds of high-yield dairy sheep, from New Zealand and Australia on a large scale, launched research and development of dairy sheep and set about establishing a dairy sheep institute with farsightedness to start breeding, mass reproduction and spreading of domestically developed new breeds of dairy sheep with the highly adaptive Mongolian sheep as the female parent. Years of research work in the reproduction and breeding of cashmere-producing goats in the breeding bases has led to the spreading of dairy sheep industry in various places in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Gansu and Hebei. Raising dairy sheep to shake off poverty has become an emerging sector of breeding in Fengzhen and adjacent areas in Inner Mongolia and plays an essential role in poverty alleviation for farmers and herders, the development of regional economy and ecological preservation on grasslands.
The livestock modern biological breeding team innovates in technologies of livestock reproduction, makes remarkable achievements in biological breeding, and is committed to serving the people with high technologies. Under the leadership of Prof. Li Guangpeng, the team studied Mongolian cattle, Luxi cattle and Simmental cattle as their objects of research, conducted loads of pioneering work through gene editing, cloning of somatic cells, embryo transplantation and other modern biological breeding technologies and succeeded in creating new beef cattle breed resources characterized by rapid growth, muscular build and high yield of quality beef. Experts give high praise of the achievement as “at leading position among similar researches globally and of milestone significance for the preservation, development and application of cattle breed resources and strategic importance for enhancing independent innovation of livestock breeding in China”.
Leader of the team, Prof. Li Guangpeng, is a Chang Jiang Scholar and is recently awarded the title of Advanced Figure in Contributing to Building the Moderately Prosperous Society in an All-round Way. Working on the grassland with full devotion to the cause of education and scientific research over the years, he has built a research team in modern livestock breeding in the frontier areas. The team has been committing itself to innovation, development of livestock breed resources and finding solutions to bottleneck problems in breed improvement, filled blanks in China with a host of technologies, made a series of original achievements of research which are highly fundamental and of international influence in the field of basic research, and has laid a theoretical foundation for the biological breeding of cattle and sheep in China. While making significant progresses in scientific research, the team attaches great importance to cultivation of talents by taking active parts in the building of teaching systems, curriculum systems, textbook systems and the systems of education through practices to improve the system of talent cultivation, and has forged a corps of talents with professional technologies with expertise in gene operation technologies, biology of genetically modified embryos, embryo transplantation and management, security analysis of genetically modified organisms, gene editing and breeding of genetically modified animals, livestock raising and management and prevention and control of diseases. A mode of versatile talents has been basically created which plays a remarkable role in teaching and scientific research and a reserve of various excellent talents has been set up for the cause of the breeding of large animals in the future. The team for genetic improvement and biological breeding of cattle headed by Prof. Li Guangpeng was awarded the honorary title of Advanced Collective in the 6th National Awards for Professional Talents in October 2021.
