South China Agricultural University is a “211 Project” university sponsored by both Guangdong Province and the Ministry of Agriculture. The university is strong in its academic research and well equipped with research facilities. 

There are 8 national research platforms, 9 key laboratories of the Ministry of Agriculture, 2 key laboratories of the Ministry of Education, 15 Guangdong Provincial key laboratories, 3 Engineering Research Centers of the Ministry of Education, and 2 Guangdong provincial key Research Bases for Humanities and Social Sciences.

The New Plant Variety Testing Center (Guangzhou branch) of the MOA, the Livestock and Poultry Products Supervision and Testing Center (Guangzhou branch) of the MOA, the State Genetically Modified Crops Testing and Supervision Center (South China branch), Guangdong Rural Area Policy Research Center and Guangdong Timber and Wood Products Quality Supervision and Testing Center are all stationed inside SCAU.

The research outputs of SCAU have been increasing steadily over the years. Since 2012, SCAU has hosted 26 international  conferences and established 7 international joint labs/research centers (including those set up with Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan counterparts). We have carried out 91 international cooperative scientific research  projects and successfully registered 2 international patents. According to the latest statistics of the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database, 8 disciplines of the University entered global top 1% including Plant and Animal Sciences, Agricultural Science, Chemistry, Microbiology, Materials Science and Engineering. A total of 8,689 papers have been selected in  ESI database with a total citation of 78075 and per-article citation of 8.98. From 2015 on, we have 65 more highly-cited papers and 6 hot papers according to statistics.

(Updated in December 2019)