News Releases

Agricultural innovation park for Orange Grove

For Release Upon Receipt - April 25, 2014

St. Augustine


ST. AUGUSTINE, Trinidad and Tobago – From April 5 to 16, 2014, The University of the West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine Campus hosted a five-member delegation from the China Agricultural University (CAU), China’s leading University in Agriculture. The delegation comprised Du Jinkun, Han Yijun, Wang Jianhua, Zhang Tianzhu and Ren Huazhong which from April 11 included the President of the university, Ke Bingsheng.  

The main purpose of the visit was to produce a plan for the development of the Orange Grove Farm into a modern Agricultural Innovation Park. The project team, which included Isaac Bekele, Wayne Ganpat, Gregory Gouveia, Antonio De Gannes, Wendy-Ann Isaac and Govind Seepersad, all members of The UWI Faculty of Food and Agriculture, were able to complete the first phase of the planning exercise and submit it to President Ke Bingsheng and Principal Sankat. In addition, over the ten days, the visiting team toured the University Field Station at Mt. Hope, as well as the Orange Grove Farms at Trincity.  They also took a trip to the agricultural lands at Santa Cruz and Paramin, and conducted farm sightseeing.  

Located in Beijing, CAU’s agricultural research and demonstration sites are spread across China.  Led by President Ke Bingsheng, the University played a key role in the ‘green revolution’ in China. The country has transformed itself in a relatively short period from being import-dependent to becoming internally self-sufficient and being a significant exporter of food to the rest of the world.  

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About the Chinese Agricultural university (CAU)

China Agricultural University (CAU), directly subordinated to the Ministry of Education, was selected as the first group member entering both the State 211 & 985 Program in order to be constructed as one of the Key State Universities in China. As the origin and the oldest higher agricultural education institution in China, CAU’s history could be dated back to 1905, when the College of Agriculture was founded in the Jingshi Daxuetang (the former Imperial University of Peking and the present Peking University) by the Qing Dynasty. The current CAU was merged in 1995 by the former Beijing Agricultural University and the Beijing agricultural Engineering University.

With more than 100-year history, CAU has formed a comprehensive university with distinctive feature and dominant position in agricultural sciences, education, research and extension. The strong groups of disciplines at the University are agriculture & life science, natural resources & environmental sciences, agricultural engineering & automation science, informatics & computer science, as well as economics, management and social sciences. All the disciplines in CAU cover a wide range of fields, including agriculture, livestock, engineering, biology and bio-technology, resource and environment, science, economics, management, law, literature, medicine and philosophy.

About The UWI

Since its inception in 1948, The University of the West Indies (UWI) has evolved from a fledgling college in Jamaica with 33 students to a full-fledged, regional University with well over 40,000 students. Today, UWI is the largest, most longstanding higher education provider in the Commonwealth Caribbean, with four campuses in Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Open Campus. The UWI has faculty and students from more than 40 countries and collaborative links with 160 universities globally; it offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Food & Agriculture, Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science and Technology and Social Sciences. UWI’s seven priority focal areas are linked closely to the priorities identified by CARICOM and take into account such over-arching areas of concern to the region as environmental issues, health and wellness, gender equity and the critical importance of innovation.  

(Please note that the proper name of the university is The University of the West Indies, inclusive of the “The”, hence The UWI.)

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