The pesticide research in CCNU was developed under the initiative of the late well-known pesticide chemist Professor Zhang Jingling. Institute of pesticide chemistry was formally established in 1982; the right to grant master and Ph.D. degree in pesticides was obtained in 1993 and 1998, respectively. Meanwhile, it was approved as a key discipline of Hubei province. In 2003, Key Laboratory of Pesticide & Chemical Biology of Ministry of Education and Hubei Provincial Pesticide Engineering Research Center were both founded; the promotion center of pesticide generic technology for SMEs in Hubei Province was established in 2005; In 2007, the subject of pesticide science of CCNU was selected as the national key disciplines; Hubei Provincial Research Platform of Detecting Techniques for Pesticide Residue & Agricultural Products Security was founded in 2008.
During the past forty years, keeping the guiding ideology of “combination of scientific research and personnel training, combination of basic research and applied research”, the discipline has produced a large scale of qualified academic talents on agricultural pharmacology. At the same time, it has succeeded in developing more than ten new agricultural chemicals like methyl parathion and triphosphate, which has brought profits of almost 1 billion yuan as well as great social benefits. It won one Chinese Science and Technology Conference's prize, one second prizes of National Prize for Progress in Science and Technology, one third prize and forth prize of State Award for Inventions and more than 20 provincial and ministerial awards including first prize of Ministry of Education Prize for Natural Science, first prize for natural science of Hubei province, first prize for technical invention of Hubei province and first prize for scientific and technological progress of Hubei province. It was also entitled “National Advanced Group of Agricultural Science and Technology Promotion”, “Merit for Technology Marketing”, “National Advanced Research Group in Colleges and Universities” and “National Small Family of Model Workers”, etc.
The discipline has a strong faculty group which involves 18 professors, 20 assistant professors and 12 lecturers. Among them one is the member of State Disciplines Evaluation Group, one won National Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars, one is member of Academic Division of Scientific and Technological Commission, 7 were awarded Ministry of Education New Century Excellent Talents, 6 enjoy State Council Special Allowance, 8 enjoy Hubei provincial government special allowance or receive the honorary title of Middle-aged Experts with Outstanding Contributions of Hubei Province, and 3 are respectively selected into the first- level and second-level Hubei New Century High-level Personnel Project. It was also cited as Ministry of Education Innovation Team, the first Innovation Team of Key Industries of Hubei Province and 2 Hubei Innovation Groups.
This discipline sticks to the guiding ideology of grounded to the basic research, oriented to the national and social demand. It has undertaken key projects of “National 973 Plan”, National Science and Technology Supporting Program, the State Natural Science Fund and National Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars. Four research directions are formed: (1) Bio-rational design of green pesticides and its chemical biology; (2) New synthetic methodologies of heterocyclic compounds with pesticide activity;(3) Molecular pharmacology of pesticide; (4) Environmental analytical chemistry of pesticides.
Now, this discipline is equipped with advanced instrument platform, with a total value of more than 40 million yuan, including 600M NMR spectrometer, 400M NMR spectrometer, X-ray single crystal diffractometer, High resolution tandem bio-mass spectrometer, LC-MS spectrometer, GC-MS spectrometer, SGI molecular modeling system (made up of a 24CPUOringin300 server and 5 SGI workstations equipped with INSIGHTII and AMBER software and molecular modeling software like SYBYL and Gaussin03), 108CPU computer cluster, elemental analyzer, high performance liquid chromatograph, gas chromatograph, ELIASA, gel imaging system, dimensional cataphoresis apparatus, fluorescence spectrophotometer, electrochemical surface plasma resonance system, UVS, Isothermal titrating apparatus, circular dichroism spectrophotometer, microwave irradiation equipment, vacuum glove box and optical detector.