On May 6th, Yang Xiaoyan, Distinguished Professor of Changjiang Scholar of Lanzhou University, gave a lecture entitled "Rice in the South and Corn in the North: The Formation Process of Early Chinese Agricultural Patterns" to undergraduate students of the College of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Prof. Yang took three research areas in North China, lower Yangtze River and Lingnan as examples, using microsomal plant remains (phytosilicate, starch granules) to reconstruct the domestication process of millet and rice, and discussed the origin and spread of corn agriculture and rice agriculture and their environmental background.

Firstly, Prof. Yang started from the three major centres of agricultural origins in the world: Mesoamerica, the two river basins, and East Asia, and the representative crops of agricultural origins in each centre, pointing out that although the major crops domesticated in these regions are known, there are still many questions to be solved about when, where, why, and how they were domesticated by humans and spread around the world, and these questions are the hot issues in the study of agricultural origins.

Based in China, Prof. Yang introduced the three major centers of agricultural origin in China, namely the Yellow River Basin for corn agriculture, the Yangtze River Basin for rice agriculture and the Pearl River Basin for tropical agriculture.

At the end of the lecture, Prof. Yang introduced recent research projects to the students and encouraged them to climb the scientific ladder.