The development of the Forestry can be traced back to the agricultural testing fields and the affiliated agricultural workshop established in Guangdong, 1909. It has a history of 100 years. Through generations of efforts, with the influence of the leadership from Prof. Shen Pengfei, Prof. Jiang Ying, Prof. Xu Yanqian and other well renowned scientists of Forestry, various subjects groups with tropical and subtropical forestry characteristics have been formed, subjects include forest genetics, forest breeding, forest reservation, forest management and forest ecology, all of which played profound roles in higher education and scientific study of China. In addition, they have all contributed to movements of “recover barren hills in five years, planting Guangdong in ten ” and “brand new planting in Guangdong” in the 1980s.

     Since 1981, forest reservation, forest breeding, forest management, and landscape botany have been awarded master's degree one after another. In 2011, the above mentioned were granted with state-of-the-art of master's degree site in forestry. In 2012, forestry was classified as Key Major of Guangdong Province. In 2014, Forest Park Management was granted to establishing master’s degree site. Nominated with “National Key Laboratory of Subtropical Bioresource Utilisation and Reservation”, Germplasm’s reservation and utilising sub-lab, the “Guangdong Key Laboratory of Forest Plant Germplasm of Innovation and Utilisation” and the “Key Laboratory of Energy Plant Resources and Utilisation of the Ministry of Agriculture” etc. eight national and provincial-level scientific research platforms, especially the Woody Forage of Guangdong Engineering Technology Research Centre, provides great support to the development and application of woody forage plant resources. Forestry (undergraduate) major is a national-level characteristic institutional centre, and it has also been added to the first batch of “Talents Program of Excelling in Agriculture and Forestry Education and Training” by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology. In 2011, Forestry was classified as the Guangdong Provincial Education Team. The “Guangdong Provincial Preserve Research Centre” and the “Guangdong Low Carbon Economy and Climate Change Research Centre” are contents of Forestry.

      There are 20 professors, 16 associate professors, 6 lecturers and 4 teaching assistants in Forestry major. Among them, there are 9 doctoral professors, 31 master's professors.  27 professors with doctoral degrees, and 28 professors with outside-of-school students. 12 people had overseas study experience. One of them was nominated as the first and second level candidate of the National “Bai Qian Wan(massive) Talents Program”, and seven were chosen as the “Qian Bai Shi(range-by-range” school-level training audiences in Guangdong Province. Four were awarded With the title of “Southern Guangdong Excelling Teacher” or “Southern Guangdong Education New Talent”. There are 4 experts with special funding from the State Council and 3 middle-aged experts with outstanding contributions at the provincial levels.

      Since the 12 Five-Year Plan, 379 graduate students have graduated in this major, including 22 doctoral students. There are currently 298 graduate students, including 30 doctoral students. Ye Longhua was awarded “Top Ten Forestry Graduates of China” in 2013, and Su Yongyu published a paper in Nature Genetics as a co-author in 2014.