Zhang Taolin
Dr. Zhang Taolin (China) is currently Vice Minister of Agriculture of the People’s Republic of China. Dr. Zhang obtained his PhD in Agronomy at Justus-Liebig-Universitaet Giessen, Germany, where he studied soil science and agroecology. As an expert on soil degradation and sustainability, he has become renowned for his research on red soil.
In the early 1990s, he became one of the youngest organizers of national agricultural scientific projects. Since then, he has authored 120 theses; 3 monographs; and 5 compilations of papers on soil quality, degradation of red soil, assessment of soil fertility in southern China, and agricultural sustainability. During the same period, Dr. Zhang presided over a number of national and international research projects. Due to his achievements in academia, Dr. Zhang began serving in the mid-1990s as Deputy Director and then Director of the Institute of Soil Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He then took the position of the Vice Mayor of Nanjing Municipality, Jiangsu Province, and then Vice Governor of Jiangsu Province.
