At the invitation of professor Sergey Shabala, associate professor Fanrong Zeng from CAB, visited University of Tasmania in Australia on January 14 - 21, 2019. During the visiting, A/Prof. Zeng attended the workshop on physiological and molecular mechanisms in plant adaptive response to drought, salinity and waterlogging, and delivered a speech on Ion homeostasis mechanism in barley tolerance to drought and waterlogging. Furthermore, A/Prof. and Prof Shabala made an in-depth discussion on the application of international joint projects, the research contents of the collaboration and the joint supervision of PhD students for the next five years. In addition, Drs. Ian Newman and Keith Bolton from University of Tasmania offered an in-detail introduction on the development, global distribution and application of the state-of-art technique micro-electrode ion flux estimation; and discussed the possibility and prospect of introducing this technique into China.

 Based on this academic exchange visit, A/Prof. Zeng and Prof. Shabala have made a detailed plan for the collaboration between them, and established an agreement on joint supervision of PhD students. In addition, A/Prof. Fanrong Zeng has been officially appointed to the Editorial Board of Functional Plant Biology from CSIRO Publishing (Australia) as the associated editor.