Huazhong Agricultural University (HAU) has a long history over one hundred years. Its predecessor, Huazhong Agricultural College (HAC), termed Hubei Agricultural College in 1940, was derived from Hubei Farming School (HFS) established in 1898 by Mr. Zhang Zhidong, governor of Hubei-Hunan region. In 1952 when China 's high institutions were restructured HAC was founded, on the basis of merging Agricultural College of Wuhan University with Hubei Agricultural College , Agricultural College of Henan University, Agricultural College of Nanchang University, Agricultural College of Guangxi University, Agricultural College of Zhongshan University and some departments of Hunan Agricultural College . HAC had its name changed to HAU in 1985.

The National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement was built on combining the strength in genetics and breeding of major crops with the recent developement of molecular biology in plants in Huazhong Agricultural University. The set up of this laboratory was officially completed in 1994 by the State Planning Commission with cofunding by the Ministry of Agriculture.

REDB was built on the recent development in genomics research of rice at National Center of Plant Gene Research in Huazhong Agricultural University. The set up of this system was officially completed in 2001 by a grant from RFGC(Rice Functional Genomics Project of China).

In 1992, NCGR was established jointly by the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and the Shanghai local government to provide a major focus in China for mapping and sequencing the rice genome, and genomes of other organisms.
    Since 1998 NCGR has been a member of the International Rice Genome Sequencing Project (IRGSP) to completely sequence the entire rice japonica genome. NCGR has been fully working on the chromosome 4 sequencing in close collaboration with the IRGSP members, the Chinese National Human Genome Center at Shanghai, and Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of CAS.