The mechanisms of the calamities caused by important crop diseases and the control technologies. The work includes biological features of pathogenic organisms, the mechanisms of pathogenicity, the dynamics of the pathogen populations, the ecological mechanisms of epidemics and causing calamity in large regions, the plant resistance, the population genetics and the molecular mechanisms of the interactions between plant and pathogenic organisms or vectors.

 The mechanisms of the calamities caused by important insect pests and the control technologies. The scientists target at  biological characteristics of important crop insect pests, the dynamics of insect populations and the cause of calamity, the behaviour of migration, proliferate and procreation, the technologies for sustainable control, the mechanisms of plant compensation, and the resistance inheritance, the mechanisms of pheromone communication of crop-insect pest-natural enemy and the molecular interaction.

 Monitoring and forecasting technology for important pest organisms. To utilize remote sensing, GIS and GPS, computer network information technology, physiological, biochemical and molecular biological technologies for monitoring  and forecasting  the occurrence and damage of main crop diseases and insect pests and proposing the tactics of management and establishing information system of main crop diseases and insect pests.

 Invasive alien species. The focus is on the biology of important invasive alien species, the genetic variation of the populations, the mechanism of causing calamity and the crucial control techniques.

 Search and utilization of important microbial germplasm resources for biological control. The main work includes the screening and the utilization of microbial germplasm resources with high efficacy, the structural and functional genomics of important microbes used for the control of insect pests, bioinformatics of the microbes, searching and utilization of novel functional genes, genetic modified plants and microbes with resistance to diseases and insect pests, the molecular mechanism of the interactions between active ingredients and the target organisms and the biology and ecology of natural enemies and the techniques of large scale artificial rearing and the release.

 Ecological safety of important genetically modified organisms. The interests are about the evaluation of the resistance efficacy and environment safety of the disease and insect pest resistant crops and microbes genetically modified, the monitoring, testing of transgenic components and the risk assessment.