Asian Regional Artemia Reference Center (AR-ARC) was established in cooperation with Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2016. AR-ARC was approved as Tianjin International Cooperation Base in 2017, and has been operating since April 2018. AR-ARC affiliates to College of Marine and Environmental Sciences, Tianjin University of Science and Technology. Its research activities are also supported by State Key Laboratory of Food Nutrition and Safety, Innovation Team of Ministry of Education for Comprehensive Utilization of Brine Resources, and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Marine Resources and Chemistry.

AR-ARC actively responds to “National Ocean Strategic Deployment”, follows the frontier of marine and environmental sciences, and complies with the overall layout of the university's discipline development. AR-ARC focuses on the fundamental research and application of Artemia and other halophilic organisms, enhances the innovative scientific research, and provides services for national and regional marine economy development.

AR-ARC promotes and coordinates interdisciplinary and interregional Artemia research, sets up platform for Artemia information exchange, and provides technical consultation and services for Artemia cysts production and its application in larviculture, and facilitate sustainable exploration and utilization of Artemia resources.

AR-ARC possesses the only Artemia gene bank and database in Asia, and has fully functional laboratories for aquaculture, nutrition and chemical analysis, molecular biology, microbiology and cell biology study.