IRS25111 Plant Breeder - Grain Legumes, East and Southern Africa

Specific duties:

• Establish and lead the breeding activities for the CGIAR component of the CGIAR-NARS network.
• Design and implement an effective collaborative breeding strategy to develop elite breeding material, and a product advancement process to identify candidate new varieties for targeted market segments and product profiles.
• With NARS and selected other partners, identify, obtain, and develop appropriate germplasm to sustain breeding programs.
• In association with multidisciplinary network scientist & staff, EiB, and partners, develop modern population improvement and testing strategies.
• Co-ordinate the development of a stage-wise multi-environment product performance testing strategy, data analysis and advancement process, which is aligned with crop market segments, TPEs or agroecologies.
• Ensure cost effective breeding operations, and standard operating procedures that deliver agreed quality and performance indicators.
• Develop strong partnerships with national public breeding programs to collaboratively identify germplasm, product needs and define complementary breeding objectives.
• Enable and actively support the regional crop network to collaboratively plan and implement breeding activities that balance the development of individual and shared network germplasm products and builds capacity to share knowledge, best practices, training, etc.
• Support and contribute to seed system activities in the region.
• Lead or contribute to develop research proposals and other fundraising initiatives.
• Lead or contribute to publication of research results in international, refereed journals.

Requirements

• PhD in Plant Breeding/ Genetics/ Quantitative genetics.
• Minimum of 5 years of public or private experience in sector breeding.
• Experience in applying quantitative genetics principles to breeding.
• Demonstrated successful experience as a pigeon pea breeder.
• Knowledge and experience using genomics and the latest breeding technologies is highly desired.
• Strong networking and facilitating skills, with focus on enabling and empowering others to succeed.
• Demonstrated ability to work in multicultural and diverse environments.
• Successful experience and commitment to inclusive research design and implementation.
• Fluency in oral and written English is essential.
• Must be willing to travel frequently both internationally and locally.
• Experience of managing staff and budget is desirable.
• The selected candidate should exhibit the following competencies: Client Orientation, Critical and Creative Thinking, Teamwork, and Communication.