On August 27, 2020, Huazhong Agricultural University and Yizhang County signed a contract to jointly build an expert workstation for navel orange industry. Both sides will make joint efforts to strengthen the monitoring and early warning of Huanglong disease, excavate and shape the connotation of navel orange industry, cultivate and innovate navel orange varieties, so as to promote the high-quality development of navel orange industry in Yizhang County.

It was reported that since 2016, Yizhang County has carried out in-depth cooperation with Deng Xiuxin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Huazhong Agricultural University on the development of navel orange industry. Since its establishment, Yizhang County has held more than 51 orange technical training courses, conducted more than 400 technical guidance sessions, and trained 301 grassroots agricultural technicians and 4316 fruit farmers. Under the guidance of the expert team led by academician Deng Xiuxin, they built a high standard navel orange sorting and commercialization processing production line, held six consecutive Yizhang navel orange festivals, promoted the cultivation of 266,000 mu of navel orange, and created an output value of 1 billion yuan, driving more than 100,000 households to increase their income, and becoming the first industry of Yizhang to get rid of poverty and become rich. Yizhang navel orange was selected as the geographical indication product of agricultural products and won the reputation of "the hometown of navel orange in China".

At the signing ceremony, both sides expressed that they would take this opportunity to build the expert workstation into a window for strengthening the county with science and technology, a highland for talent gathering, and a project for enriching the people and strengthening the county, and strive to make the navel orange industry an important industry for rural revitalization.

After the signing ceremony, the two sides conducted in-depth discussions on navel orange industry planning, achievement transformation, talent training, project demonstration, etc.