Fruit softening is a key component of ripening, causing the damage and loss in the fruit food supply chain. It has thus become a scientific and industrial hotspot in the field of post-harvest biology, storage and logistics. Modern breeding often sacrifices fruit quality, such as flavor, aroma and nutrition. Biotechnology has become an important pathway to improving agronomic traits of fruit. One of the most common strategies is to modify ethylene emission, such as antisense of ACS/ACO. RIN ...

Rice viruses are prevalent in many rice-growing countries and often cause serious damages to rice production. Among them, the rice black-streaked dwarf virus (RBSDV), transmitted by the small brown planthopper Laodelphax striatellus, causes tremendous losses in China’s grain yields every year. Therefore, discovering the transmission mechanism of RBSDV is of immense significance for its effective control.The research team led by Prof. WU Jianxiang and Prof. ZHOU Xueping from the Zhejiang Un...

“To achieve the UN’s SDGs, we need to consider multiple aspects – technology, art, culture, humanity, and business – and come up with creative, practical solutions to specific development challenges,” Prof. SUN Shouqian, secretary-general of Innovation Design Alliance of China, said at the opening ceremony of the BRIDGE Design Week 2021, which was held on Sept. 4 at Zhejiang University. BRIDGE (Better Responsibility Initiative - Design for Good Earth) Sustainable Design Action, co-hosted...

Zhejiang University continues to rise in the newly released Times Higher Education World University Rankings, climbing 19 places to rank 75th in the world.The table is based on 13 carefully calibrated performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across four areas: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.ZJU maintains its strength in the knowledge transfer pillar with the full score of 100 while achieving the improved performance in teaching and ...

In recent years, atmospheric temperature has been on the increase and extreme heat events have occurred frequently, which may not only affect the growth and development of individual organisms but also disturb the inter-species balance in competition, predation and parasitism, thereby exerting deleterious impacts on biodiversity and the ecosystem. Many studies have concluded that global warming may well exacerbate phytophagous pest infestations, promote their population growth and geographic exp...

With the expeditious development of structural biology techniques represented by single-particle cryo-electron microscopy, the 3D structures of an increasing number of important proteins have been revealed. Taking ion channels as an example, at present, the structure of at least one member of virtually every major ion channel family has been successfully resolved. It is thus one major research direction to promote the development of drugs targeting important proteins by utilizing numerous high-r...

Global warming has a dramatic impact on plant ecosystems as well as on crop productivity. Plants are able to sense ambient temperatures and transduce these signals to trigger subsequent responses for physiological adjustment and developmental adaptation. Mild-warm temperatures induce morphological changes, including hypocotyl / petiole elongation, leaf hyponasty, and accelerated flowering, known as thermomorphogenesis. The circadian clock is an internal timekeeper that ensures growth, developmen...

[Editor’s Note: Recently, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and Zhejiang University co-published the Digital Agriculture Report: Rural E-commerce Development Experience from China, exploring the role of rural e-commerce in transforming the agri-food systems in China. Just as Mr. QU Dongyu, the FAO Director-General, wrote in the Foreword, the report “marks a step on the pathway towards the FAO-led International Platform for Digital Food and Agriculture, the 1000 Digi...

[Editor’s Note: Earlier this year, Zhejiang University, with its commitment to the SDGs, launched an action plan named A Global ZJU for Social Good (Z4G) and joined forces with 60 peer universities from 31 countries and regions to make a joint statement on the 2030 Agenda. Now at the invitation of the Organizing Committee of the 16th UN Climate Change Conference of Youth (COY16) officially supported by the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), the Zh...

[Editor’s note: Today, China celebrates its ninth annual National Low Carbon Day, a campaign created to boost awareness of energy efficiency and low-carbon development policies. Let’s visit ZJU's International Campus, the first university campus in China that has joined the Eco-Campus certification system and received a platinum award, to see how it commits itself to building a zero-carbon learning and working environment.] Campus introductionThe International Campus covers an area of...