The Agricultural Ministry of China and the International Potato Center (CIP) last week signed an agreement to launch the new CIP-China Center for Asia and the Pacific (CCCAP) in Beijing.
The center, located at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, hopes to attract international and local scientists and researchers to its projects, aimed at developing potatoes as a solution to issues such as food shortages and poverty, according to the CIP's international website.
The center has yet to start its own research projects but plans initially to carry on the work conducted at sister centers in Indonesia, Nepal, North Korea and Vietnam, amongst others, according to Doctor Xie Kaiyun, liaison scientist for the CCCAP.
But not everyone is embracing the new center's aims. While the majority of the research will focus on developing new varieties of potato through natural processes, some amount of development will still be devoted to genetic modification research.
