Abstract: As the base for cultivating high-quality talents, colleges and universities undertake the mission of promoting the innovation of educational models and fostering innovative talents. The traditional cultivation model for innovative talents in the field of plant science in colleges and universities presents structural deficiencies such as obsolete teaching forms and contents, the dissociation between theoretical teaching and practice, non-standardized cultivation models, and irrational evaluation systems. As an important vehicle for deepening teaching reform, subject competitions exert a remarkable impetus in stimulating students’ innovative potential and exercising their innovative capabilities at four levels: innovative consciousness, innovative thinking, innovative spirit, and innovative quality. This paper takes the undergraduate training mode of the College of Life Sciences of Zhejiang Normal University as an example to explore how to incorporate disciplinary competitions organically into the innovative talent training mode in the field of plant science. Specific implementation strategies are proposed from multiple perspectives such as curriculum construction, management system, teaching staff, incentive and evaluation mechanisms, and the effectiveness of our college’s educational practice is introduced, in order to provide reference for the training of innovative talents in the field of plant science in similar institutions.

Key words:

subject competitions,  innovation education reform,  cultivation of innovative talents,  plant science