The earliest roots of CAB can be traced to the agriculture discipline at the Zhejiang Middle Agriculture School in 1912, which evolved from the Zhejiang Institute for Agricultural Teachers founded in 1910. One year later, the Zhejiang Middle Agriculture School changed its name to the Zhejiang Provincial First Class School for Agriculture. It was converted into the Zhejiang Public School for Agriculture Specialists in 1924, the Agriculture School of the Third National Zhongshan University in 1927, and the Agriculture School of the National Zhejiang University in 1928. The School of Agriculture of Yingshi University was merged into the Agriculture School of Zhejiang University in 1949. In 1952, the Agriculture School of Zhejiang University became independent from Zhejiang University and merged with the horticulture departments at Anhui University, Jinling University and Nanjing University to form the Zhejiang Agricultural College. In 1960, Zhejiang Agricultural College was renamed as Zhejiang Agricultural University. In 1998, the four universities (Zhejiang University, Hangzhou University, Zhejiang Agricultural University and Zhejiang Medical University) in Hangzhou were merged together to form a new Zhejiang University based on the new education reform system. In July of 1999, the departments of Agronomy, Plant Protection, Horticulture, and Tea Science, the institutes of Nuclear-Agricultural Science and Biotechnology, and the Experimental Farm affiliated to the former Zhejiang Agricultural University were merged to establish the College of Agriculture and Biotechnology as one of the 20 pioneer colleges of the new Zhejiang University.