But it was ultimately fortuitous as he later discovered a love of plant biology.

"My association with plants must have been decided by fate," he said. "I was born in July, which was believed to be the month of narcissus. Later, I devoted a great deal of time to plants such as the great lily, saffron and canna because of my work."

Now, 25 years later, Chen has firmly established himself as a leading plant scientist in China and director of the School of Life Sciences at Southwest China's Sichuan University.

He was the first in the world to discover the existence of Tannis, a special substance, in pollen while studying in the laboratory of Professor M. Cresti, a world-famous scholar in plant sexual reproduction in Italy in the late 1980s. His paper was published in Plant Sexual Reproduction, which is Germany's highest-level academic journal in the field.

When Chen returned to China in 1989, he started many research projects and taught graduate students. He also established China's first plant reproduction project laboratory from scratch.

In the past five years, Chen, a tutor of PhD candidates, has taken charge of more than 10 important research projects at national and provincial level in the research and development of resource plants and biotechnology.

The projects involve molecular biology in the development of economic plants, trans-gene technology and key technology in the protection and utilization of resource plants. Some of the projects have won awards for scientific advancement at provincial level and even higher.

He is applying for national funding for a research project on changes in the ecological environment of western China.

Chen is in Beijing this week, attending the First Session of the 10th NPC as a newly elected deputy from Sichuan Province.

Before he left Chengdu for Beijing last Saturday, he spent his spare time preparing suggestions and proposals to the coming NPC session. One is an appeal for sustained efforts to develop agriculture and improve the rural economy and farmers' lives.

"I will be much busier after becoming an NPC deputy," Chen said on a sofa in the corridor of the spacious Jinjiang Grand Meeting Hall in Chengdu three hours before his departure for Beijing. The Jinjiang Grand Meeting Hall is the office building of the Sichuan Provincial People's Congress.

He is also preparing another proposal on the preservation of pasture land in Sichuan. Pastures, which account for 43 percent of the province's total land area, are in Ganzi Tibet Autonomous Prefecture and Aba Tibet and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture. Located in northwestern Sichuan, the prefectures are in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.

However, Chen noted statistics from the Sichuan provincial government which revealed 10 million hectares of pasture, or 56.2 per cent of the useful pasture in Sichuan, had degraded by the end of 2001.

"The worsening of the environment in those places will have an adverse effect on regions in the middle and lower reaches of the river," he said.

The Sichuan delegation will submit a proposal to call on the central government to take measures during the current NPC session to stop pastures from degradation.

Having contributed greatly to the drafting of the proposal, Chen said he would speak at the NPC session to help solve the shortage of funds hampering efforts to improve pastures.

Chen is also concerned with raising the issue of biodiversity.

Following the massive flooding in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in the summer of 1998, Sichuan was the first province to ban the logging of virgin forests. It has banned logging in 174 cities and counties and reinforced protection of 19.2 million hectares of virgin forests.

Despite the achievements, farmers in some places were not very enthusiastic because they have not benefited greatly from efforts to improve the ecological environment.

As a result, they only planted the seedlings given to them.

"In some places, only one kind of tree was planted without consideration to biodiversity," Chen said.

"When a particular kind of pest arrived, all the trees withered. I will appeal for a solution to these problems in the NPC session, too."

(China Daily March 5, 2003)