Dr. Roger James Arnold , the Australian scientist on forest tree breeding and genetics who is woking with China Eucalypt Research Centre (CERC) surbodinated to CAF and has won the 2012 Friendship Award as nominated by CAF, attended the awarding ceremony held in Beijing on 28 September, 2012 and the associated activities in celebration of the 63th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China in the following days.
The Friendship Award, set up in 1991, is China's highest award for foreign experts who have made outstanding contributions to China's economic and social progress. So far, CAF has sucessfully nominated nine foreign experts in partnerships with CAF to win the award.
Dr. Arnold received his Ph.D. degree on forest genetics from University of North Carolina and he was working in CSIRO as a senior scientist. Now he is working with CERC as a senior researcher as well as on the technical committee of China Eucalypt Breeding Alliance (CEBA).
Dr. Arnold was in charge of researches on the breeding of Eucalypt and Acacia species during the 12-year employment in CSIRO and he was managing the bilateral cooperative research program between China and Australia covering projects on Reafforestation in Dongmen Forest Farm and Introduction, Domestication and Cultivation of Broadleaved Species from Australia. As leading expert he made great contributions to the successful implemention of the large-scale and influential Sino-Australian cooperative project on cold-tolerant Eucalypt, through which the cold tolerance of Eucalypt was obviously improved. Meanwhile, he worked in designing and implementing a number of cooperative research projects with China And Sri Lanka. Dr. Arnold has maintained continuous collaboration with relevant organizations in China and obtained significant achievements in selective cultivation of cold-tolerant Eucalypt. He has made remarkable contributions to enriching the fast-growing timber forest resources such as Eucalypt and improving their genetics. In particular, he completed the selective cultivation of many cold-tolerant Eucalypt species and moved 300 kilometers northwards in China the area suitable for growing Eucalypt as leading scientist of the bilateral project on improving and cultivating cold-tolerant Eucalypt germplasm resources in China and Australia. Thanks to his contribution, the plantations of Eucalyptus dunnii and Eucalyptus grandis in Guangdong, Fujian, Hunan and Jiangxi have exceeded an area of 133,333 ha and generated an output value of 4 billion yuan. As a commendation for his contribution, the provincial government of Hunan presented him the International Science and Technology Cooperation Award and the Xiaoxiang Friendship Award respectively in 2002 and 2006, and the government of Guangxi Autonomous Region also gave him the region’s friendship award.
He was employed by CERC in 2009 and is in charge of researches on the advanced-generation breeding of fast-growing timber forests of Eucalypt as well as cooperation, research and development and training in breeding of Eucalypt. He has been dedicated to establishing the CEBA since 2009 and has helped to attract a dozen of large-scale transnational enterprises to become standing members of the alliance through maintaining over 2,000 colonies and more than 200 hybrids.
In addition, Dr. Arnold has made enormous efforts to enhancing and extending the partnerships and exchanges between Chinese and Australian forest research organizations.
