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In August 2023, BUA's modern horticulture team was named the "National Huang Danian-Style University Teachers' Team". Committed to serving the strategic needs arising from rural revitalization, the team has conducted scientific research and provided social services, continuously improving the talent training model with the characteristics of urban modern horticulture. Every teacher on the team has combined classroom teaching with field practice, interpreting the significance of nurturing talents by building their character and inspiring their minds.

Cultivating Students: Field Class Guided by Teachers

In the spring of 2024, the Huang Danina-style Teachers' Team dedicated to modern horticulture led students to the ground cover plant experimental field in Changping Technology Yard. Before departure, a student muttered, "What kind of lesson can be given on field ridges?" However, as soon as they got off the bus, the students saw the team leader - Duan Liusheng, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee and President of BUA, squatting beside the potentilla chinensis with mud on trouser legs. Duan said, "This is a critical growth period. A one-day error in data will lead to a noticeable gap in the growth of the seedlings." On that day, the students didn't hear any grand theories, but came to know that the lecture platform can also be the sun-scorched field ridges, and textbooks can also be the breathing plants; more than imparting knowledge in the classroom, the teachers also act as guides and companions who bend down in the fields to "converse" with the land.

Teaching in fields is an educational tradition of the team practiced for years. All professors and associate professors teach undergraduate students, with ideological and political elements deeply incorporated in each class. The team created an innovative training model comprising five linked levels, i.e. university, enterprises, research institutes, experimental stations, and social practice. In 2024, the team organized field lectures for more than 600 teachers and students in 86 practice groups, turning the "ideological and political education" into "living textbooks".

Scientific Research: Making Fruit Farmers Smile with Pragmatic Research

In 2023, Qin Xiaoxiao, a young teacher on the team, met Mr. Zhang, an orchard farmer in Zhenshun Village, who was squatting in an abandoned apple orchard and sighing, "Bagging the apples is hard work, and my children don't allow me to do so. But apples can't be priced highly if not bagged…" At that moment, she remembered the "meaning of scientific research" often mentioned by teachers on the team: Papers shouldn't just be published in journals, but should deliver tangible benefits to farmers.

The team immediately embarked on a bag-free technology for apples. To accurately measure data, the teachers and students often stayed in the orchard for a whole day even when the temperature was almost 40℃. A student surnamed Zhou said with a smile while wiping sweat, "Ms. Qin, we're applying facial masks to the apples!" The team sprayed the "apple facial mask", a liquid biological film, onto the apples, to form a protective film that can breathe.

Seeing the successful trial of the new technology, Mr. Zhang raised a big and sweet red apply, shouting, "The apple is even bigger and sweeter than bagged ones!" More importantly, the students published high-quality papers covering the whole process from formula adjustment to field demonstration. Mr. Zhang's expression of thanks also made them realize that "the value of scientific research is to make farmers smile".

In recent years, the team's scientific research has been increasingly pragmatic, with the preservation and loss reduction technology enabling relevant enterprises in Beijing to reduce loss by 20%, and the green retention period of ground cover plants extended by 7-10 days. The team won more than ten awards, including the Liang Xi Forestry Science and Technology Award, and Beijing Agricultural Technology Promotion Award, was authorized 25 patents, and published 27 papers in total.

Social Services: "Students Will Really Care for Farmers After Working in Fields"

"We need to incorporate smart agriculture and ecological sightseeing into the plan, and make the old fruit trees bear new fruit," said the teachers on the team. In the orchard, the students were busy measuring row distances, recording soil moisture, and renovating the old orchard with great enthusiasm. "The diseased branches must be pruned, and the reflective film should be laid here - only in this way will the peaches get an even color." In Pinggu, the team was busy: Cao Qingqin and Zhang Qing were guiding pruning in the peach base; Hang Yingyan was building lettuce terraced fields and helping restore production after floods; before the Spring Festival, Duan Liusheng led the teachers and students to teach farmers how to apply the cold-resistant and color-enhancing technology in the strawberry base, which benefited the fruit farmers a lot.... Such scenes almost happened every day in the team's 10 technology yards and 9 doctor farms.

"Practical education isn't about taking students for a 'walk around' the field, but rather having them actively participate in the work." Over the years, the students' notebooks have been filled with "farmers' vernacular", and their WeChat Moments most often see the celebration of "the tiller rate of experimental fields meeting the standard". Some students gave up offers from foreign companies to join agricultural enterprises in Hebei; some pursued postgraduate studies to focus on "fruit tree stress resistance in northern areas"; others were stationed in the technology yards. The students said, "Now we understand that every field ridge we've squatted on and every piece of data we've measured constitute bricks and tiles supporting rural revitalization."

From "field class" to the R&D and promotion of technologies such as "apple facial mask", and then to the students' choice of taking roots in fields, the Huang Danina-style teachers' team dedicated to modern horticulture interprets the profound connotation of "fostering virtue and cultivating talents" with the "bent backs of teachers, calloused hands of students and blooming smiles of farmers". Focusing on the strategic needs of building China into an agricultural powerhouse and rural revitalization, the team will nurture students' love for farmers, train their skills to serve agriculture, and guide them to translate their aspirations into tangible actions on the grand stage of rural revitalization.