Dr Taek-Ryoun Kwon
Member, AfricaRice Board
Dr. Taek-Ryoun Kwon is an agricultural scientist and expert who served for over 30 years at the Rural Development Administration (RDA) of the Republic of Korea. He has held prominent leadership roles including Chairman of the Donor Council of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, Korean Chief Scientist for the G20 Meeting of Agricultural Chief Scientists, and Secretary General of the Korea-Africa Food and Agriculture Cooperation Initiative (KAFACI).
His scientific expertise focuses on rice physiology, phenomics, and the application of genetic diversity to develop stress-tolerant crops. He led international cooperation efforts as Director General and Director for International Cooperation at RDA (2018–2023), overseeing global partnerships and managing major initiatives such as the Korea Partnership for Innovation of Agriculture (KOPIA) and the secretariats of three FACI platforms covering 50 member countries, including 23 in Africa.
Dr. Kwon launched the Africa-Korea Partnership for African Rice in 2019, which later received a Presidential Award of the Republic of Korea and recognition from the Korean ODA framework and the Africa Rice Centre. His leadership in KOPIA was highlighted by the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation as a successful model for cross-border governmental innovation.
His international experience includes serving as an agricultural development volunteer in Indonesia (2 years), principal scientific roles at Bioversity International (2 years), and principal investigator at the USDA/ARS Salinity Laboratory (2 years), where he studied salt tolerance in rice. He has led or participated in crop genetic resource evaluation for over two decades.
Dr. Kwon was the lead author of the OECD Consensus Document on the Biology of Capsicum annuum and played a key role in the establishment of national frameworks for biosafety and genetic resource management in Korea. Dr. Kwon was exposed to numerous global meetings, including APAARI (2019–2022), the Technical Advisory Committee of the Food and Fertilizer Technology Center, bilateral meetings with USA, Japan and China, and international forums on plant breeding innovation, agricultural biotechnology, climate change and biodiversity.
Recently, his research had focused on the development of salt-tolerant rice using phenotypic traits and genetic diversity, and he led the establishment of Korea's national high-throughput phenotyping facility for large-scale genotype-phenotype analysis.
Dr. Kwon received his Ph.D. in Biosciences from Coventry University, United Kingdom, in 1997.
