Pusan National University Selected as Operating Institution for "Overseas Outstanding Scientist Recruitment Project"

2.1 Billion KRW Over Three Years
A Global Hub for Research and Education
on Sustainable Rice Production in Response to Climate Change

Pusan National University has been selected as the operating institution for the "Overseas Outstanding Scientist Recruitment Project (Brain Pool)," organized by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Research Foundation of Korea. With this, the university is set to embark in earnest on research for sustainable rice production in response to the era of climate change.

This project will be led by Professor Kim Seontae from the Department of Plant Life Science, who will serve as the principal investigator. Over the next three years, the university will receive a total of 2.1 billion KRW in research funding.

The Overseas Outstanding Scientist Recruitment Project is a government initiative aimed at strengthening the competitiveness of the nation’s core research fields by inviting outstanding researchers active overseas to domestic research institutions, thereby promoting joint research.

The Pusan National University research team aims to establish itself as a global research hub in the field of rice research by continuously attracting renowned scholars from abroad, leveraging the international cooperation network it has already built.

Overview of Pusan National University Overseas Outstanding Scientist Recruitment Project.

The research team emphasized the seriousness of the food crisis currently facing humanity. Population growth and climate change are fundamentally destabilizing food production systems, while volatility in the international grain market poses a threat to national food security. In particular, the frequency of complex stress factors such as drought, salinity, and pests occurring simultaneously has recently increased, leading to the conclusion that developing rice varieties resistant to these environmental changes is urgently needed. Through this project, Pusan National University plans to establish a basic scientific foundation for developing rice varieties with resistance to multiple stresses.

The research will be conducted in three main areas: rice molecular immunity, rice reproduction, and rice breeding. In the field of rice molecular immunity, Professor Kim Seontae will collaborate with Professor Wang Yiming’s team from Nanjing Agricultural University in China to elucidate the mechanism of action of "apoplast effectors"-proteins that help plants evade attacks from pathogens-and analyze the signal transduction mechanisms of immune responses. Invited overseas scientists Dr. Wei Long and Dr. Dachang Wang will participate in the research to closely examine the rice immune system.

In the field of rice reproduction, Professor Kim Yujin’s research team will investigate the functions of genes involved in the interaction of reproductive cells and haploid induction. Professor Liang Wanqi from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China will participate in this research, deepening studies in reproductive biology and, in the long term, contributing to the development of next-generation breeding technologies.

In the field of rice breeding, the research will focus on identifying key genes related to traits that enable adaptation to climate change and systematically securing domestic and international allele information to advance digital breeding technologies. To this end, Professors Han Longji, Di Kui, and Zhang Wanzhu from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences have been invited to collaborate on joint research for the development of superior rice lines.

Through this project, Pusan National University has established an international joint research system covering the entire cycle of rice research, from molecular immunity to reproduction and breeding. The university expects this will enable the development of stable rice production technologies in the era of climate change and play a crucial role in strengthening national food security over the long term.