International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, IEAS

Academician

Qichang YANG

Profile:

Elected Academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences in 2020, Professor Qichang Yang is a distinguished Chinese horticultural engineer whose research and professional work have focused on protected horticulture, plant factories, and LED-based plant lighting. Born in August 1963 in Anhui Province, he received his B.Sc. in Agricultural Engineering from Huazhong Agricultural University in 1985, his M.Sc. in Bio-environmental Engineering from Beijing Agricultural Engineering University, now part of China Agricultural University, in 1987, and his Ph.D. in Bio-environmental Engineering from China Agricultural University in 1996. He began his career at the Institute of Agro-Meteorology, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, in 1987 and moved to the Academy’s Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture in 2002, where he led research divisions and an innovation programme in plant environmental engineering. Since 2017, he has served at the Institute of Urban Agriculture in Chengdu, where he is Research Professor and Doctoral Supervisor and has served as Executive Deputy Director and Chief Scientist. He has also undertaken visiting research at Wageningen University and the University of Arizona. His current roles include Director of the Key Laboratory of Energy-Saving and Waste Treatment in Protected Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and Director of the China–Romania “Belt and Road” Joint Laboratory for Agricultural Cooperation. He serves in international and national professional organisations concerned with intelligent plant production and agricultural lighting, and received the ISHS Fellow Award in 2026. His honours also include selection under the national Hundred-Thousand-Ten Thousand Talents Project and recognition as an Outstanding Talent in Agricultural Scientific Research.

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Professor Yang’s research has centred on plant–environment interactions in protected cultivation and energy-efficient production technologies. Since 2002, he has led research on plant factory systems in China, addressing technologies including crop-specific “light recipes”, LED lighting, light–temperature coupled environmental control, thermal-energy storage in greenhouses, and three-dimensional cultivation. His work on tailoring light quality, intensity, and photoperiod to crop requirements has contributed to the development of controlled-environment production systems, while his research on energy management has addressed the coordination of lighting efficiency and environmental control in plant factories. He has also developed horticultural techniques for urban agriculture and controlled-environment crop production, including root-function separation in sweet potato and tree-type cultivation. His artificial-light crop breeding accelerator has been used to shorten the growth cycle of rice, supporting accelerated crop breeding under controlled conditions, while mobile and containerised plant factories have been developed for urban food production, education, and demonstration. Professor Yang has led more than 20 national research projects, including projects under the 863 Programme, and has received two Second Prizes of the National Science and Technology Progress Award, a China Patent Gold Award, five provincial and ministerial first prizes, and the Guanghua Engineering Science and Technology Prize. He has published more than 160 papers as first or corresponding author, authored ten monographs including Plant Factories, and holds more than 130 authorised invention patents. Through sustained research, technology development, and international collaboration, Professor Yang has contributed to connecting protected horticulture with controlled-environment agriculture, urban food production, and the development of plant-factory and smart-agriculture technologies in China and internationally.