Website：http://info.catas.cn/

       1. Overview

The Institute of Scientific and Technical Information（ISTI）of Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences，was founded in 1954, which is a national research institute focusing on tropical agricultural economy, information innovation and other public service.  ISTI has maintained a strong commitment to researches on agricultural economy, rural development and relative policy in tropical area, and on tropical agricultural information and technology application. The Library and Archives are traditional departments of the institute, providing free service. ISTI has 107 staff, 48% of whom holds a master degree, 24 of whom are senior Scientists. In recent years, ISTI undertook over 60 national, ministerial and provincial projects. Since establishment, ISTI won 18 national, ministerial and provincial awards on tropical agriculture information resources, information management, regional planning, including one second prize of Chinese Agricultural Science and Technology Progress Award, one second prize and two third prizes of Science and Technology Progress Award granted by Hainan Provincial Department of Science and Technology. ISTI owns seven software copyrights and several published monographs. It held activities to serve agriculture, rural area and farmers, such as Month of Science and Technology Activities, Science and Technology to Rural Areas, Sun Training and so on. About five thousand or six thousand farmers are trained per year. 

        2. Contact Information  

    Research Office: Tel: +86-898-23300835

                    Fax: +86-898-23300143

                    E-mail: xxskyb@126.com

       Address: Baodao Xincun, Danzhou, Hainan 571737, P. R. China

       3. Research Areas

       ISTI mainly carries out researches on tropical agricultural information, tropical agricultural economy and development strategy, and affords information services such as editing and publishing Sci-tech journals, and providing books and archive. Its priorities include:  

     Tropical Agriculture Information and Digital Agriculture

     Carrying out comparative analysis of domestic and overseas tropical agriculture, safety assessment of tropical agricultural products, analysis and assessment of impacts of tropical natural resources and environment on tropical agriculture, tropical agricultural information collection, collation, processing, analysis and the construction of network information service platform, development of tropical agricultural intelligent decision system and technology expert system and its application, tropical agricultural information acquisition and monitoring technology, tropical agriculture information standard system, etc.

 Tropical Agricultural Economy and Industrial Policy

Undertaking researches on tropical agricultural macro economy and policy, regional development in tropical agriculture, tropical agricultural resources and environmental economy, industrial economy of tropical agriculture, and international tropical agriculture economy, to construct and improve dynamic database of tropical agricultural industrial and economic development at home and abroad, and to develop analysis and decision-supporting system of socio-economy’s impacting policy; by analyzing the impact of the changes of tropical agricultural economy and relative policies domestically and exotically, so as to provide policy advices to Chinese government and commercial sector to participate in international competition of tropical agriculture and agriculture internationalization.

  4. Main Achievements

      The institute has won one second prize of Chinese Agricultural Science and Technology Progress Award, one second prize and two third prizes of Science and Technology Progress Award given by Hainan Provincial Department of Science and Technology, nine software copyrights, published 10 books, 305 papers in core journals.

The farmer production precision database system, crop production management decision-making system, and major tropical crops intelligent management system were developed by ISTI. The application of these systems makes informatization level in planting management enhanced and the management efficiency increased. The traceability technology for tropical agricultural products quality and safety was developed based on one-dimensional and two-dimensional codes so that core technology security has been provided for full traceability of tropical agricultural products quality and safety in Hainan, and applied and popularized in tropical fruits, areca nut and others to promote the healthy development of relevant industries. Researches were made on the construction of tropical crops standardization system framework. Guidance was given to the establishment of 8600 hectares of tropical agricultural standardization demonstration base in Yunnan and Guangdong Provinces, so that the qualified rate of sampled products from the base increased by 3.6%, the net income at the demonstration base increased by RMB 84.14 million, i.e. the economic income increased by more than 8%, the standardized production level of main tropical crops was significantly uplifted.