The College of Agriculture at Guangxi University was founded in Wuzhou in 1932, with Professor Pan Zhu qi, the former Vice President of Guangxi University and a renowned educator, as its first dean. In 1937, it moved to Shatang, Liuzhou; in 1944, to Rongjiang, Guizhou; in 1945, it returned to Zhegujiang, Liuzhou; and in the summer of 1946, it relocated to Yanshan, Guilin. It became an independent institution as the Guangxi Agricultural College in 1952. In 1958, the Guangxi Agricultural College moved to its current location in Nanning. It was renamed Guangxi Agricultural University in 1992 and merged with Guangxi University in 1997. The new College of Agriculture at Guangxi University was formed through the merger of the Department of Agronomy, the Department of Plant Protection, and the Department of Horticulture from the former Guangxi Agricultural University.
Currently, the college has 150 faculty and staff members, including 114 full-time teachers. Among the full-time teachers, there are 39 with senior-level titles, 33 with associate senior-level titles, 32 doctoral supervisors, and 114 master's supervisors. 111 of these teachers hold doctoral degrees, accounting for 97.37% of the full-time teaching staff. There are 4 national-level talents and 9 Guangxi high-level talents.
The college offers a comprehensive range of disciplines, with four departments (Agronomy, Plant Protection, Horticulture, and Agricultural Resources and Environmental Sciences) and one experimental teaching center for plant sciences. It has a complete undergraduate-master-doctor-postdoctoral talent cultivation system. Currently, there are two postdoctoral research stations (Crop Science and Plant Protection), two primary discipline doctoral programs (Crop Science and Plant Protection), four primary discipline master's programs (Crop Science, Plant Protection, Horticulture, and Agricultural Resources and Environment), and one professional master's program in agriculture covering three fields (Agronomy and Seed Industry, Resource Utilization and Plant Protection, Rural Development). There are also four undergraduate majors (Agronomy, Plant Protection, Horticulture, and Agricultural Resources and Environment). Crop Science is recognized as a first-class discipline in Guangxi, and all four undergraduate majors (Agronomy, Plant Protection, Horticulture, and Agricultural Resources and Environment) are designated as national first-class undergraduate majors under construction. The college currently has 2,583 enrolled students, including 1,351 full-time undergraduates, 1,205 graduate students (both master’s and doctoral), and 27 international students. Students have achieved excellent results in various national and regional entrepreneurship and academic competitions. In the past three years, undergraduates have won provincial and ministerial level awards 258 times. These include three silver and three bronze awards in the national "Internet+" College Students Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, two bronze awards in the national Challenge Cup Entrepreneurship Plan Competition, 11 gold and 3 silver awards in the regional Challenge Cup competition, and 1 third prize in the national Challenge Cup Academic Science and Technology Works Competition, and 1 first prize in the Autonomous Region Competition. The doctoral student social practice project, initiated in 2005, has become a brand in the national "Three Rural Areas" (rural areas, agriculture, and farmers) social practice activities during the summer vacation and has been commended multiple times by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League and the Autonomous Region.
The college currently has 18,957 square meters of teaching and research space. It has 200 acres of on-campus teaching and research experimental bases, as well as the 16,800-acre Fusui Subtropical Agricultural Science New Town base. The college possesses 6,277 pieces of equipment, with a total value of 142 million yuan, including 213 pieces valued at over 100,000 yuan each. It hosts four national-level teaching and research platforms: the State Key Laboratory for Conservation and Utilization of Subtropical Agro-Bioresources, the International Science and Technology Cooperation Base for Conservation and Utilization of Subtropical Agro-Biological Resources, the Co-Innovation Center for Sugarcane Industry (co-built by the province and ministry), and the Demonstration Center for Experimental Teaching in Plant Science. It also has nine provincial-level teaching and research platforms, including the Guangxi Key Biology Laboratory for Sugarcane and Major Science and Technology Innovation Base and the Guangxi Key Laboratory of Agro-environment and Agric-products safety, as well as two Guangxi University Key Laboratories, one virtual simulation experimental teaching center at the autonomous region level, and one autonomous region-level collaborative talent cultivation platform.
During the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, the college undertook 1,138 research projects with a total funding of approximately 428 million yuan, ranking first among all departments in the university. It received 45 provincial and ministerial level science and technology awards, including one second prize in the Agricultural and Livestock Husbandry Harvest Award from the Ministry of Agriculture, one first prize in the Science and Technology Progress Award from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, three first prizes and 19 second prizes in the Guangxi Science and Technology Progress Awards, four second prizes in the Guangxi Technical Invention Awards, one second prize in the Guangxi Natural Science Awards, and one second prize in the Guangxi Humanities and Social Sciences Excellent Achievements Awards. A total of 52 new crop varieties were approved or registered, including the first nine sugarcane varieties, one citrus variety, and one potato variety registered at the national level, as well as four rice varieties and ten sterile lines approved in Guangxi. The college obtained 190 patents, published 58 books and textbooks, and published 2,292 papers, including 478 papers indexed in SCI. Some of these results were published in prestigious journals such as PNAS, Nature Communications, The Plant Cell, and Molecular Plant.
The college will be guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, and will thoroughly study and implement the spirit of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and President Xi Jinping's letter to chancellors and presidents of agricultural universities across the country. We will adhere to the fundamental task of cultivating moral integrity and fostering talent, upholding the motto "Diligent, Honest, Simple, Sincere; Diligently Studying to Attain Innovation." We will persist in the philosophy of "Diligent Practice, Exalting Skills, Understanding Reality, and Nurturing Talent," comprehensively advancing overall reforms. Following the strategic plan of Guangxi University, which includes a "Centennial Goal, Three-Step Implementation, Five First-Class Objectives, and Six Strategies," we aim to cultivate leading talents of the new era who possess the "Five Qualities." We will advance the construction of world-class disciplines and universities, making positive contributions to poverty alleviation and rural revitalization, striving to become a top domestic comprehensive research-oriented college with a well-structured academic program and distinctive subtropical agricultural features.