The Integrated Breeding Platform is looking for Adviser on Plant Breeding Consultant in the IBP/IFAD Project in Ghana, Senegal and Uganda
Ref.: CONS/IBP/2019/03
Context :
The Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP) is seeking an Adviser on Plant Breeding Consultant in the IBP/IFAD Project – Enhancing institutional breeding capacity in Ghana, Senegal and Uganda to develop climate resilient crops for African smallholder farmers.
Background :
The Integrated Breeding Platform (IBP) is conceived to help plant breeders accelerate the creation and delivery of new crop varieties in the context of an increasing global demand for food. It does so by giving access to vanguard technology and quality services for both traditional and modern breeding activities at low to no cost.
In partnership with AfricaRice, IBP received an IFAD grant for a three-year project – Enhancing institutional breeding capacity in Ghana, Senegal and Uganda to develop climate resilient crops for African smallholder farmers. The project is hosted at AfricaRice headquarters, in Abidjan – Cote d’Ivoire. One of the four components of the project is about Breeding: Integrating modern approaches. Plant breeding is critical to develop improved germplasm in response to local demand, aiming at responsible and sustainable increase in agricultural production. Breeding efficiency is impacted by time, monetary resources, and process quality. To fully achieve the objectives of component 3 of the project, and as included in the project proposal, the IBP would like to recruit a part-time consultant who will work with partners on the Breeding activities. He/she will contribute to evaluate the baseline of the different target breeding programs, help identifying possible bottlenecks and how to overpass them, especially now that breeders have access to an online crop information system, as well as to molecular marker technologies. The consultant will ensure that breeders adopt good practices to implement all phases of the breeding activities, including objective setting, germplasm selection, experimental designs and analysis, and resources allocation to deliver the expected outputs of the project.
AfricaRice, as host institution of the IBP is recruiting an individual consultant who will work with the partners on the Breeding components of the project. He/she will oversee the breeding activities of the national programs with a focus on implementing breeding good practices and modern technologies in the selection process.
Responsibilities :
The consultant will conduct activities with specific tasks that include, but are not limited to:
- Work with individual breeding programs of the target countries for specific crops to make recommendations to increase efficiency of the respective breeding efforts and strategies ;
- Help integrating the fully adoption of the BMS and marker technologies into the different target breeding programs ;
- Communicate with breeders and students on a regular basis to ensure that workplan are implemented accordingly to the proposal ;
- Provide mentorship and recommendations to help overpassing possible bottlenecks from a strategic and logistics point of view, as they might arise ;
- Assist in experimental design and data analysis.
Required qualification and experience :
Education :
- Holding a PhD in Plant Breeding, Genetics or significant related fields.
Experience :
- At least 15 years of relevant experiences in Plant Breeding Research Activities ;
- Expertise in genetic analysis and application of genetic information in crop improvement ;
- Expertise in germplasm characterization and germplasm development in the private sector and in the multinational seed industry ;
- Excellent background in working with national programs in West and East Africa ;
- Experience in working with multi-disciplinary teams ;
- Fluent, writing and speaking, in both English and French.
Terms and conditions :
- This is an international, home based, part-time consultancy position ;
- The duration of the consultancy contract is one (01) year.
Apply here by clicking on this link: http://eservices.africarice.org/application/index.php
Only online applications are considered. If you are a good fit, kindly submit your application not later than May 28th, 2019. If you encounter some troubleshooting when applying kindly report incident through this email only: africaricehr@cgiar.org . Applications are not authorized nor considered through this email.