The International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) had declared Dr. Baohong Zhang, Professor of Biology at East Carolina University, Greenville, USA, as the ICAC Cotton Researcher of the Year 2018. ICAC honours a leading cotton researcher each year by awarding a certificate of recognition, a shield and an honorarium of US$1,000.
A graduate from China Agricultural University with a degree in plant genetics and breeding, Zhang joined the Institute of Cotton Research at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science (ICR-CAAS) in 1991, where he pioneered the development of transgenic Bt cotton. He also developed an advanced CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing tool and its application on cotton genetics and breeding. He is the first scientist to succeed in employing CRISPR/cas-9 genome- editing technology to knock out an individual functional gene in cotton, including the fibre-related MYB25-like and miRNA genes.
Additionally, Dr. Zhang developed highly efficient approaches for cotton somatic embryogenesis, plant regeneration and highly efficient Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation systems in cotton. He conducted innovative research on small regulatory RNAs and is a pioneer for cotton microRNA studies.
