6-10 August 2018 – STEAM@Soybean (2nd Phase) Gansu Exchange Tour

Our Center Director Prof. Hon-Ming Lam, in collaboration with the Big Education Platform, initiated an innovative STEAM Education project – STEAM@Soybean for Hong Kong secondary school students. The comprehensive project incorporates all-rounded learning activities for students to experience, observe, record, analyze, and create, with soybean as the focused research plant.

After a trial on soybean propagation during the 1st phase of the STEAM@Soybean project, these secondary school students joined an exchange tour to Gansu on 6-10 August in the 2nd Phase of the project.

During the trip, students visited various agricultural research stations. They learnt about the detoxification of potatoes and development of new Potatoes cultivars in the Gansu Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

They also visited the CUHK-CAU Joint Experimental Station for Water-saving in Agriculture, where they were introduced how data collection and analysis were done with state-of-the-art technology both in the lab and on the field.

Highlight of the trip was the visit to the large-scale experimental fields of Longhuang soybean cultivars in Wuwei. Prof. Lam and his Gansu collaborator Prof. Guohong Zhang gave lively explanation to the students on agricultural concepts including different types of intercropping, drip irrigation, film-mulched irrigation etc. with real-life examples exhibiting right in front. Students also stepped into the field to be a “half-day researcher”, to observe and record on the soybean’s growth characteristics.