Zhuocheng Hou, PhD

Zhuocheng Hou, Ph.D. is a professor at the College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University. A non-partisan scholar, he was selected as a Leading Talent in Scientific and Technological Innovation under the National High-Level Talent Special Support Program. He concurrently serves as Executive Deputy Director of the National Engineering Laboratory for Animal Breeding; a member of the National Livestock and Poultry Genetic Resources Committee and Deputy Head of its Poultry Group II; Special-Task Scientist for the National Waterfowl Industry System; an expert on the National Waterfowl Genetic Improvement Plan Committee; President of the Poultry Science Branch of the Chinese Association of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine and Vice President of its Information Technology Branch; Deputy Secretary-General of the Livestock and Poultry Genetic Technology Innovation Alliance under the Ministry of Science and Technology; and Chief Scientist for duck breeding at Beijing Capital Agribusiness Co., Ltd. His group has decoded the genomes of the Beijing duck, mallard, and Shaoxing duck, among other poultry species, and the duck genome has been adopted as the reference duck genome in the internationally renowned EnsEMBL database. They have made important progress in understanding the genetic mechanisms underlying domestication selection for economically important traits in ducks, including a dwarfism lethal gene, fat deposition, and eggshell formation. They established a whole-genome selection technical system for the Beijing duck and applied it industrially, and bred the new specialty Peking duck variety Jingdian Beijing Duck for roast duck. Together with collaborators, he was the first internationally to propose a framework for a new livestock and poultry stem-cell breeding technology system, which has been recognized by the Chinese Academy of Engineering and others as a disruptive technology for future livestock and poultry breeding. As first or corresponding author, he has published more than 40 SCI papers in journals including Nature Communications and GigaScience, and has received the National Science and Technology Progress Award (Second Prize), the Beijing Science and Technology Progress Award (First Prize, twice), the Ministry of Education Science and Technology Progress Award (Second Prize), and the National Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Harvest Award (First Prize).