The National Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology, affiliated to Huazhong Agricultural University (HZAU), was founded on the basis of microbiology, a national key discipline initiated by Professor Huakui Chen, a member of Chinese Academy of Science and the founding father of soil microbiology in China. Three strong disciplines of HZAU were integrated to form the Laboratory, namely, molecular biology (a national key discipline), preventive veterinary medicine and fermentation engineering (two provincial key disciplines). With the approval of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Laboratory was founded in December 2003 and passed inspection in 2006. The Lab focuses on agricultural microorganisms. It serves as the leading unit for the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs' disciplinary group for the utilization of agricultural microbial resources. It has consistently received an “excellent” rating in evaluations by the Ministry of Science and Technology for national key laboratories and outstanding departmental key laboratories in the field of life sciences in 1996, 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2016. In 2022, it was successfully recombined and approved as the "National Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology"

The staff of the Laboratory are 96 fixed research staff, and 10 full-time administrators and technical support engineers, among whom 86 are professors, 10 are associate professors, and 86 are PH.D. supervisors. The Laboratory boasts an Innovation Research Group funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), an Innovation Team supported by the Ministry of Education, five Outstanding Agricultural Research Talent and Innovative Team of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and fifteen Hubei Provincial Natural Science Foundation Innovation Group.

A panel of experts constitutes the research group: two academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, ten National Distinguished Youth Science Fund Recipient, four "Changjiang Scholar" Distinguished Professor, five “Hundred, Thousand, Ten Thousand” Talents Project, six Young and Middle-aged Leading Talents in Science and Technology Innovation, Ministry of Science and Technology and 30 "Four Youth" Talents.

Main research fields: Exploration of Agricultural Microbes, Structure and Function of Microbes, Microbe-Host-Environment Interactions, New Agricultural Microbial Products

Director of the Lab: Prof. Daohong Jiang

Director of the Academic Committee of the Lab: Aademician Huanchun Chen

E-mail: hzaml@mail.hzau.edu.cn

Tel/Fax: 027-87280670