“It’s time to come up with innovative concepts and to create things”.

On November 8, Professor Jiankang ZHU from the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), stood on the stage of the 2023 Shenzhen Global Innovation Forum of Talents as the first speaker, sharing his relationship with food and exploration in scientific research.

Professor Jiankang ZHU is the Dean of the Institute of Advanced Biotechnology at SUSTech and a member of the American Academy of Sciences (NAS).

With the theme of “Imagine-Innovate-Create-In The City Of Dreams”, the forum attracted talents from all over the world to create a better future, and provide important support for Shenzhen to accelerate the construction of an industrial science and technology innovation center with global influence and build it into a city of innovation.

This forum was hosted by the Shenzhen Municipal Party Committee and the Shenzhen Municipal People’s Government.

Jiankang ZHU and seven other guests who have pursued their dreams in Shenzhen delivered keynote speeches at the event.

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Based on his experience, Jiankang ZHU spoke about forging his career in Shenzhen, a land of innovation and creation. He told the audience, “Let there be enough food for everyone”, as a faith for his decades of scientific work.

“My biggest dream as a child was to have enough to eat”, he recalled in his speech, noting that when he returned to his hometown after work, he would help his parents harvest wheat.

Over the years, Jiankang ZHU’s parents would occasionally ask him what kind of scientific research he was doing. “My studies focus on improving food yields in salt- and drought-prone environments to ensure the survival of more people”, was his response.

As a botanist known for plant stress research, one of the goals of Prof. ZHU’s research is to make crops grow and harvest in saline and arid deserts. Today, his team has broken new ground in the field of stress biology, discovering the molecular mechanism of plant drought and salinity tolerance genes, and setting up an extensive framework in the field of drought and salinity tolerant molecular genetics, which is at the forefront in the world.

He noted that it is not easy to conduct basic research, and carrying out scientific research is a precious thing.

“With the shift in people’s nutritional demands, from eating enough to eating healthily, we created Gene Magic Scissors, an efficient gene editing tool with autonomous intellectual property rights. It can be used to improve the genes of plants and cultivate crops with better quality and more conducive to health”, said Jiankang ZHU.

Over the years, Prof. ZHU and his team have used their own gene-editing tools to create more than 100 crops, including salinity-tolerant rice and soybeans, high-yield wheat and soybeans, and various crops that are resistant to insects and diseases.

Once these crops have been cultivated in the laboratory, it becomes imperative to transport them to various experimental sites located around the nation. It is necessary to conduct field trials in order to ascertain the efficacy and quality of the items.

“There are dozens of experimental bases spread across the country, from the northeast to the south, from Xinjiang to Hainan. We spent the whole day conducting studies in the fields, so we could say that we were ‘down to earth’”, said ZHU.

Talking about his experience of carrying out scientific research for many years, Prof. ZHU believes that it is not just about publishing papers, but also solving real problems, adding that it is a luxury to be able to do this as it requires a lot of finance and expensive equipment.

Conducting scientific research and writing papers can answer questions about basic science and promote the development of disciplines, or they can contribute to the development of the industry. He believes basic research is as important as applied research and industrial transformation.

Jiankang ZHU joined SUSTech in 2022 as the Dean of the Institute of Advanced Biotechnology, and is an internationally renowned molecular geneticist and plant biologist. He has long been engaged in developing new gene editing technologies for gene therapy, biological breeding, molecular testing, plant stress biology, and epigenetics research.

He has been selected in the list of the world’s Highly Cited Researchers and has one of the highest citation rates in the field of natural sciences in the world.