Prof. Rugen Xu is currently the director of the Department of Crop Genetics, Breeding and Applied Biotechnology (Department of Seed Science and Technology) at the College of Agriculture of Yangzhou University, deputy director of the Key Laboratory of Plant Functional Genomics of the Ministry of Education, deputy director of the Barley Professional Committee of the Chinese Society of Crop Science and deputy director of the Crop Seed Professional Committee, post expert of the National Barley and Highland Barley Industry Technology System, and member of the Undergraduate Teaching Steering Committee of the Ministry of Education. He graduated with a Ph.D. from Yangzhou University. He is mainly engaged in teaching and research in barley genetics breeding and seed engineering.