Since its official establishment in 2016, the Institute of Tropical Agriculture and Forestry has integrated the research results of the former tropical agriculture disciplines of Hainan University, with the Danzhou Campus of Hainan University as the center to blend the patriotic dedication of "Creating greatness in the straw room and shining the southern border with sincere heart", the hardworking spirit of "Starting a business in a thatched cottage and starting from a barren beach", and the spirit of reform and innovation of "Dare to venture and try, dare to be the first" into the motto of "All rivers run into sea, all efforts aim for the highest ideals". Adhering to the positioning goal of being based on the tropical regions of Hainan, serving the construction of Hainan Free Trade Port, and radiating the development of tropical agriculture in Southeast Asia,

The school now has 1 national key laboratory cultivation base; 1 world-leading metabolic biology laboratory; 19 provincial and ministerial-level research platforms; and 4 university-level (municipal-level) research platforms. It has 4 academician team innovation centers in Hainan Province; 1 national germplasm resource bank; and 3 provincial germplasm resource banks, and two director units of the National Innovation Alliance. It was approved with one forestry planning and design qualification center; one Regional Laboratory of Risk Assessment of Agricultural Products Safety of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and the Qualification Unit of Pesticides Registered for Efficacy Tests of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. The school has 2 national scientific and technological innovation teams; 19 provincial scientific research and innovation teams; and 25 school-level scientific research and innovation teams. The college has more than 50,000 square meters of teaching and research buildings, various types of equipment worth more than 300 million RMB, teaching and research base of more than 3,000 mu (2,000,000 square meters).

In the past five years (2018-2023), the school has been approved for more than 200 projects, such as the National Outstanding Youth Fund, the National Key Basic Research and Development Program, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Key Projects, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Programs for General Projects, the Ministry of Agriculture's Industrial Technology System, and other projects, with a cumulative project funding of more than 4.0 billion RMB. It has published more than 2,000 academic papers in SCI source journals and domestic core journals, and more than 300 papers have been included in Cell, Nature Plants, Global Change Biology and other important journals. It has won 17 scientific and technological awards at the provincial and ministerial levels; selected and bred 2 nationally-approved pasture varieties, 1 nationally-approved rice variety, 8 provincially-approved rice varieties, and recognized 6 oil tea varieties at the provincial level; It was awarded 30 national invention patents. In the past five years, it has won more than 50 provincial and ministerial achievement awards and published more than 100 publications and monographs.