Initiated by National Key Lab for Crop Genetics and Innovative Use of Germplasm of Nanjing University of Agriculture, Yangtze River Delta (YRD) Seed Industry Innovative Lab Alliance comprising seed labs in Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang and Anhui was founded on June 1 in Nanjing.

The founding members are 28 national key labs, provincial labs and provincial or ministerial key labs in the YRD region including Zhongshan Biological Breeding Lab (Jiangsu), CAS Key Lab for Formation and Shaping of Plant Traits (Shanghai), National Key Lab for Rice Biological Breeding (Zhejiang) and Provincial-Ministerial Joint National Key Lab for Tea Plant Biology and Resource Utilization (Anhui). Wan Jianmin, academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering is appointed president of the alliance. 

Committed to building a STI community in the YRD region, the alliance will play an active role in aligning major core technologies with national strategic tasks and major industrial demands, and strive to develop a new mechanism for multi-disciplinary seed labs across regions to better cooperate with universities, industries and research institutes, facilitating high-quality technological development in the seed industry in the region and beyond.