The National Information Agriculture Engineering Technology Center (NETCIA) was established with the approval of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in November 2010. It is a national R&D research center specializing in information agriculture technology innovation, system integration, and technology extension. On the basis of modern information technology and agricultural science, the center strives to achieves the following goals：

u  To build an interdisciplinary R&D team of information agriculture

u  To establish an advanced platform for conducting innovation research and engineering development on key technologies;

u  To develop a number of extension bases for demonstrating agricultural information technologies and products;

u  To become a leading international center for promoting the research, development and transfer of agricultural information technologies and products.

Research themes：

The research activities of the NETCIA has been focused on four areas：

Ø  Agricultural Remote Sensing

Ø  Agricultural System Simulation

Ø  Agricultural Precision Management

Ø  Agricultural Information Engineering

In the past 10 years, the center has completed more than 80 research projects funded by the National “863” Program, National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Key Technology R&D Program, the Special Agricultural Programs of Ministry of Agriculture, the National Scientific and Technological Achievement Transformation Program, and a few other provincial programs. The academic achievements of the center includes 540 papers with more than 280 in SCI or EI-indexed journals, 48 Chinese patents, 2 U.S. Patents, 50 software copyrights, 5 monographs, 3 second prizes for National S&T Progress Award, 3 first prizes for Provincial S&T Progress Award and 1 first prizes for Provincial Agricultural Extension Award. The center has been active in collaborations with enterprises and extension stations. These collaborations have led to the complete establishment of 15 bases for industry-university-research cooperation, 5 working stations for information agriculture experts, 3 enterprise working stations for graduate students, and 8 demonstration bases for new technology and new product transformation. Every year the center holds 2 regional training seminars on information agriculture-related technology and products and 2 field demonstration seminars. Over 50 innovation technicians and 1,000 extension technicians received such training in information technology and products. The center has become an important technological platform and talent base for promoting information agriculture and modern agriculture in Jiangsu Province and in China.