Scientists, research units need to study issues from the requirements and needs of the practice

On July 2, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) Le Minh Hoan paid the very first visit and chaired a meeting with The Vietnam Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VAAS).

Proposing to invest in three modern regional level laboratories

Prof. Dr. Nguyen Hong Son, Director of VAAS reported some shortcomings and limitations of the science-technology research works over the past years to the Minister. Accordingly, the transformation to the mechanism of autonomy and self-responsibility opens a new path to development, thus a challenge to state-owned units.

VAAS suggested that the Government, relevant ministries, and departments issue proper policies in the coming time for units to exploit better and more effective sources of land, properties, and well-trained human forces in public-private cooperation, step-by-step mechanism renovation, management procedure to build up a division operating in the form of a scientific enterprise.

Opening independent and logical evaluation and testing methods to be able to contract to the final product; having policies to encourage units to raise capital by themselves so they can decide to invest at first, and then receive the support from the state for specific products.

At the same time, there should be a policy to support law enforcement on intellectual property to develop the knowledge economy in research units, and to support the collection of copyrights for scientific products that bring high social benefits but finding difficulties in copyright enforcement under the Intellectual Property Law.

VAAS also put forward to invest in synchronously upgrading equipment and infrastructure to form three modern laboratories in three regions, operating under the model of excellence centers, meeting the requirements of improving quality of research.

Requesting MARD to allow VAAS to take the initiative in merging and dissolving organizations without legal status to speed up the implementation of the review and arrangement of organizations according to Resolution No.19-NQ/TW dated October 25, 2017, of the 6th meeting of the 12th Central Committee.

First and foremost, unleash for the thinking

Director of the Institue of Agriculture Science and Technology in the South Central Coast – Dr. Ho Huy Cuong said that from the practical experience, the institute divided into three groups namely analysis and investigation group to define the goal, subject, contents of the research attaching to the practical demands of businesses and localities. The second group specializes in doing research and the last grou[ focuses on transfer and trading research products.

Thanks to the division, the Insitute had some research introduced to apply, transfer and trade effectively in actual production. This is also a foundation for creating the financial sources for the unit to re-invest, and serving the operation as well as improve the livings of scientists and staff of the Institue.

Agreeing with this point of view, Le Van Duc, Deputy Director of the Department of Crop Production, said that besides the existing scientific research, VAAS needs to form a team specializing in market information to determine the decisions direction, research needs of businesses and localities, increasing the practicality of application of research topics.

Besides, VAAS may also study to build some sustainable production and cultivation model attaching to the associated with mechanization, commodity production areas associated with building codes of planting areas, and deep processing of products.

Nguyen Van Trong, Deputy Director of the Department of Livestock Production, suggested that in the next period, VAAS could also coordinate and attach research topics between the livestock and cropping industries in the strategy of building a circular economic chain in agriculture as cultivation and animal husbandry have a close relationship. The input of the livestock industry is the product of the farming industry and a lot of by-products and wastes of the livestock industry are the input of fertilizers for the crop industry.

At the meeting, there were many opinions raised on the issue of building a mechanism to create flexible conditions for the transaction of research topics. Accordingly, there may be a mechanism to allow assignment of tasks, direct allocation of funds to research projects of VAAS institutes, instead of a very time-consuming and procedural bidding mechanism for topics.

Some experts also encouraged VAAS to focus more on the activities of transfer, sales, application, and commercialization of research products.

Besides, the proportion of high-tech factors in the researches of units under VAAS are still limited, it is necessary to invest and improve the infrastructure and material systems for research based on the focused and appropriate investment.

Concurrently, VAAS also needs to set up science-technology research strategies for the industry including especially research groups for leading products in the industry, to avoid dispersion, fragmentation, and failure to produce final products.

According to Deputy Minister of MARD Le Quoc Doanh, over the past year, VAAS has contributed several scientific products, thus the quality and the proportion of science and technological factors within these products need to be improved and the value of the products was not appropriate to the quantity.

Currently, the agricultural sector is shifting from focusing on production to an agricultural economy.

Accordingly, science also needs to shift towards how to serve the goal of improving quality and lowering costs. The productivity of many crops is now up above the ceiling, it is necessary to have research on advances and technical packages to reduce production costs among others.

Actively offering products

Speaking at the meeting with VAAS, Minister Le Minh Hoan said that he read and referred fairly comprehensive difficulties and bottlenecks in the scientific operation of units under VAAS, which were reported in the Vietnam Agriculture Newspaper.

He stressed that based on existing problems and obstacles in operation, VAAS needs to focus on solving, especially in need of thinking and finding effective solutions in operation during the period.

Accordingly, concurrent with the basic research, the Minister said that VAAS units need to actively grasp the needs of establishments, localities, and businesses to choose appropriate research topics and issues including urgent problems for production at first.

Research units actively innovate their thinking in transferring research products to production, proactively offering research products to localities and enterprises; actively capture customer feedback on research products when put into use. In the short term, MARD will support VAAS to promote the transfer of research products into production, especially in coordination with enterprises in the agricultural sector.

The Minister also demanded VAAS to enhance, pay more attention so that its lower units actively cooperate and coordinate with each other to better promote available resources.

“I see there are several laboratories and tissue culture rooms, why don't we think of focusing on a large, methodical, and modern laboratory for scientists, where they can have every research equipment in hand,” suggested the Minister.

"To switch from agricultural production to an agricultural economy according to the current orientation of the industry, we must first take economic thinking. Economic thinking in commerce is to sell what customers need. Scientists, Research units also need to aim to study issues from the requirements and needs of the practice.

Current scientific units want to untie the mechanism. But before waiting for the state mechanism to untie, science, research units and scientists must first unleash their thinking and approaches.”

(Minister Le Minh Hoan)