Starting September 1 of this year (2016), the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine under the Council of Agriculture launched the "Training Intern Plant Doctor Work Plan", subsidizing the Meinong District Farmers' Association in Kaohsiung City to hire a "full-time intern plant doctor," hoping to test farmers' demand for plant doctors in the process of promoting the plan. Currently this first intern plant doctor in Taiwan, China trained by the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine is Gao Peilin, who just graduated from the Institute of Plant Pathology and Microbiology at National Taiwan University.

On the afternoon of November 24, a farmer surnamed Huang with dark skin, holding two diseased leaves from small tomato plants, hurriedly walked into the inspection room of the Meinong District Farmers' Association. He told Gao Peilin: "These two leaves are all speckled. Please help me take a look. What disease is this?" Gao Peilin stared intently into the eyepiece of the microscope, adjusting the focus while saying: "This leaf should be damaged by spider mites."

Farmer Huang was very grateful for Gao Peilin's help, which let him find the cause of the crop disease, so that he had a chance to save a whole garden of tomatoes that had not yet been harvested. Farmer Huang said, "You have no idea how absurd it was! I asked three agrochemical stores. The first said the leaf spots were because the soil lacked calcium, the second told me the tomatoes had gray mold, and by the third, they told me it was leaf mold. I really didn't know what to do! Fortunately I heard people say that the farmers' association here has a plant doctor and testing equipment, so I had no choice but to come here for help."

Intern plant doctor is the first formal profession in Gao Peilin's life, and it is especially meaningful to her, but she never imagined that at twenty-five, she would be even more important to the people at the agricultural production sites.

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