'Plant bank' gathers drought-resistant species

Botanist dedicates his life to search for seedlings in arid areas to curb desertification

To curb the expansion of the Gobi Desert in the center of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, botanists have been searching for and collecting seedlings of drought-resistant plants at home and abroad to try to cultivate them in arid areas.

Pan Borong, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, is one of them. He has tried to find an ecological way to curb the region's desertification for the past four decades, and is still working at the age of 72.