Donggang town, Wuxi was included in the 105 agricultural characteristic towns by Jiangsu Provincial Agriculture Committee recently.

Agricultural characteristic towns are required to have specific industry orientations, cultural connotations and superior resources, with the concepts of innovation, coordination, green, openness and shareable development.

Donggang town, the seat of HOdo Group, locates in the northeast Wuxi. In 1997, HOdo grasped the rapid propagation technology for Chinese yew through artificial cultivation, and started to extract and purify anticancer paclitaxel from yews.

Through a decade of research, HOdo has conquered the worldwide difficulty of germination of Chinese yew seeds, grasped its rapid propagation technology and founded the world’s largest breeding base of Chinese yew.

Due to the outstanding air purification effect, Chinese yew has entered Zhongnanhai, World Expo and Shenzhen Universiade. With the improvement of overall ecological environment, there are more and more centenarians around the Chinese yew breeding base of HOdo Group. Till 2017, there were 18 centenarians at Donggang town where the Chinese yew breeding base locates.