[IMAGES: PEOPLE’S DAILY]

“If I hadn’t been to Yunnan Province, I would not have achieved such fruitful research results,” said Peter Mortimer, a South African research fellow at the Kunming Institute of Botany (KIB) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in an interview.

Mortimer came to Kunming City in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province on a graduation trip 11 years ago, and fell in love with this city at first sight.

Making his decision to stay and work at CAS’s KIB, he did not expect that he would become a botanical expert with support from his research team in ten years.

Devoted to fungus research, he and his team have discovered more than 1,000 new fungi over that period of time. They have been recording all the edible mushrooms in the world and studying the artificial cultivation of those with ultra-high economic value.

Currently, Mortimer is in charge of four projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). In 2020, he received the special support for high-end foreign experts in the Yunnan Province Program for High-level Talents Introduction.

He attributes all his achievements to the rich biodiversity resources in China and the country’s tremendous efforts to protect biodiversity over recent years.

“In the past five years, China has put increasing effort into diversity conservation, with more and more international cooperation projects having been carried out, which provides me with opportunities to participate in cooperation projects with Thailand, South Africa, and Kenya,” Peter said.

“China’s achievements in ecological protection stand out. With the opening of the COP15 held in Kunming, I hope China will play a leading role in global biodiversity conservation in the future,” he added.

Source: People’s Daily