Recently, the national key research and development plan "Innovative Research and Development of Active Ingredients in Licorice" was jointly declared by Jiangsu Tiansheng Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd and Tashkent National Agricultural University of Uzbekistan, led by Professor Xu Ximing form our school , was successfully approved (total funding is 10.41 million yuan, of which our school has allocated 5.41 million yuan), this project is the first strategic international scientific and technological innovation cooperation key special project hosted by our school, achieving a zero breakthrough in the national key research and development plan of the pharmaceutical sector.

Licorice, used as medicine and food, is also known as "National senior" and "the king of herbs". It is widely used in medicine, food, and other fields, and the market has been in short supply for a long time. Licorice is also one of the strategic plant varieties in our country, which plays an extremely important and irreplaceable ecological role in desertification prevention and control, but due to over-harvesting and rough development, the licorice industry is currently facing bottlenecks such as the near-exhaustion of wild resources and severely lagging behind intensive processing. On this account, China and Uzbekistan jointly established the "Jiangsu Province Food New Resources and Medicinal Function Development Engineering Research Center" as the foundation in the previous period. It is hoped that through collaborative research on key technologies such as licorice quality innovation, new active ingredient discovery, and functional product development, it will accelerate the transformation of licorice from ordinary agricultural products to functional foods, health products, and medicines, and play a demonstrated and leading role in promoting industrial upgrading, increasing farmers' income and sustainable ecological environment.