About Us

College of Food Science, South China Agricultural University, was founded by famous fruit and vegetable storage and processing experts and professors Li Peiwen and others in 1983 on the basis of storage and processing of agricultural products. In 1994, the Department of Food Science was founded and renamed as College of Food Science in 2001. The first-class discipline food science and engineering was evaluated as the key discipline (the first level) in Guangdong Province, ranking the forefront in national assessment of similar discipline.

We have 4 departments of food science, food engineering, bioengineering and packaging engineering and 1 teaching experimental center. We own many provincial and ministerial level scientific research and teaching platforms: Guangdong Key Laboratory of Food Quality and Safety, the Laboratory of Food Processing and Technology coorganized by the CPC and the local government, the Quality of Safety Risk Assessment Laboratory of Agricultural Products Storage by the Ministry of Agriculture(Guangzhou), Guangdong Animal Product Processing and Quality Control Technology Research Center, Guangdong Food Safety Emergency Detection Technology Research Center, Guangdong Food Safety Inspection and Risk Control Engineering Technology Research Center, Guangdong Natural Product Bio-engineering Technology Research Center. The existing staffs are 87 people, including 19 professors, 9 doctoral tutors 31associate professors, 5 senior experimentalists, with a doctorate accounted for 82.7%. Besides, we have several provincial and ministerial level platforms for research and education, including the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Food Quality and Safety, Food Processing Technology Laboratory coorganized by the CPC and local government, Quality and Safety Risk Assessment Laboratory of Agricultural Products Storage in Canton under the Ministry of Agriculture, Guangdong Livestock and Poultry Products Processing and Quality Safety Control Technology Research Center, Guangdong Food Safety Emergency Detection Technology Research Center, Guangdong Food Safety Testing and Risk Control Engineering Technology Research Center, Guangdong Natural Products Bioactive Engineering Technology Research Center.

We have an excellent training system of undergraduate, masters, doctoral and post-doctoral talents. We provide 4 training directions for undergraduate course: food science and engineering (including food nutrition), food quality and safety, bio-engineering (including fermentation and brewing direction), packaging engineering, of whichthe first two were approved state-level specialty, while the latter two were approved Guangdong Province specialty.. We have master and Ph.D. authorized centers and post-doctoral research stations of food science and engineering primary discipline. We independently set subordinate discipline offood safety and nutrition for doctoral degree and a subordinate discipline of packaging engineering for master’s degree, as well as master of professional degrees for food engineering, bio-engineering, food processing and safety. With high quality of talent training, graduates are welcomed by employers. The employment rate of undergraduates reaches over 95% and of postgraduate even 100%. We won the second prize of national teaching achievement twice. There are 2377 students, including 274 graduate students and 2103 undergraduates.

Scientific research adhere to the tropical subtropical agricultural products as the main target and forms multiple stable research directions of agricultural and livestock products processing, food quality and safety, food bio-engineering, food chemistry and additives, food packaging engineering. We adhere to production and research cooperation as well as serve the industry. Over the past 5 years, we has undertaken more than 400 research projects such as the 973 Program(national key basic research development program), the State Support Program and the National Natural Science Fund of China, and published more than 600 papers including SCI and EI covering more than 300 articles and 118 authorized patents. We won 13 awards of provincial level or above, of which 1 second prize of national science and technology progress. We won the 2013 national outstanding doctoral dissertation nomination award.

We have established cooperative relations on international academic exchanges with relevant institutions and research institutes in more than 10 countries and regions such as the United States, Britain, France, Russia, Canada and Australia. Cooperative research and joint training of international personnel have entered into normalization.

All of us will continue to keep making progress for a better future.