Post-Doctoral Fellow – Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS)

ICRISAT seeks applications for International Postdoctoral Fellowship, to be based at ICRISAT Research Station in Samanko, Mali, in West and Central Africa region. Grain and fodder quality are key traits for sorghum breeding in West-Africa (WA) and the development of Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS) calibrations is a critical step to the incorporation of these traits as target objectives in breeding programmes. The CG Research Program on Dryland Cereals has identified the NIRS technology as a bottleneck for sorghum breeding in WA and is acquiring a NIRS to be located at IER (Institut d’Economie Rurale) in Bamako, Mali and serve as regional platform for both stover and grain quality phenotyping for dryland cereals in WA.

Several NIRS calibrations for sorghum grain technological quality and for sorghum stover quality have been developed by CIRAD in collaboration with IER, and by ICRISAT in collaboration with ILRI in India. These will serve as starting point for calibration development at IER.
 
ICRISAT is a non-profit, non-political organization that conducts agricultural research for development in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa with a wide array of partners throughout the world. Covering 6.5 million square kilometers of land in 55 countries, the semi-arid tropics is home to over 2 billion people, with 650 million of these being the poorest of the poor. ICRISAT and its partners help empower those living in the semi-arid tropics, especially smallholder farmers, to overcome poverty, hunger, malnutrition and a degraded environment through more efficient and profitable agriculture. ICRISAT, established in 1972, and is a member of the CGIAR Consortium. For more details, see www.icrisat.org. 

The Job:

• Standardize NIRS devices between IER, ICRISAT and CIRAD.
• Organization of NIRS spectral data acquisition on ongoing experiments for grain and stover quality at IER.
• Transfer and standardization of NIRS spectral data from IER to CIRAD and comparison with existing databases. Identification of outliers, planning of additional lab data production
• First phase development of grain and/or stover quality NIRS calibration for Millet
• Contribute to publications on genetic analyses of these traits in sorghum

The Person:

• PhD degree in relevant fields with working experience in NIR spectroscopy.
• Experience in multivariate data analysis
• Experience in food science and/or animal nutrition, especially grain and stover quality analyses is an advantage.
• Programming ability in Matlab, R.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English and French.

The Reward:

The Fellowship is for a period of 12 months.  An attractive compensation in US Dollars will be offered to the right candidate. 

How to apply:

Applicants should apply on or before 31 December 2013 by email to: ICRISATjobs@cgiar.org, with a letter of motivation, latest Curriculum Vitae, and names and contact information of three references that are knowledgeable of the candidate’s professional qualifications and work experience. The reference name of the position (PDF-NIRS) should be clearly indicated in the subject line of the email. Screening of applications will begin from 1 January 2014, and will continue until the post is filled. All applications will be acknowledged, however only short listed candidates will be contacted. 

ICRISAT is an equal opportunity employer and is especially interested in increasing the participation of women on its staff. ICRISAT has a flexible approach to international appointments and welcomes dual-career couples.