项目介绍

2024年10月28日

Function

We are seeking four highly motivated PhD students to join our team as part of the interdisciplinary Oil-Clips program (OIL-CLiPS – WUR), funded by Wageningen UR and its partners. The Oil-Clips program aims at unraveling the causes of disease outbreaks in oil palm plantations, focusing on Basal Stem Rot (BSR) in Indonesia and Bud Rot in Colombia and how these are affected by changes in climate and farmer practices. These disease outbreaks are seen as an interplay between host, pathogen, human action, and environment. The recruited PhD candidates will investigate these relations by applying concepts and methods from at least two disciplines.

Your contribution to this project will be to investigate the drivers of basal stem rot occurrence in oil palm, review current control strategies, and identify new control options for both large-scale and smallholder systems. Special attention will be paid to the potential role of cover crops in suppressing Ganoderma boninense, the causal agent of basal stem rot, and how they may support soil health and suppress disease through their influence on antagonistic microbes in the microbiomes. Diverse cover crops will be tested, and their compatibility with different farming systems will be assessed.

As PhD researcher you will particularly explore:

• the prevalence of G. boninense and BSR and the drivers of disease occurrence and outbreak;
• the relationship between BSR prevalence and yield; 
• review proven management options that exist during cultivation and replanting or can be developed to control BSR and explore the potential of cover cropping in controlling BSR

You will focus on Indonesia, but the work includes collaborative data collection efforts in Colombia, facilitating a comparative analysis of disease prevalence across continents. In Indonesia, you will collaborate with the university partner (UGM) and oil palm company partner (SD Guthrie Research Sdn Bhd). You will be working ca. half of the time in Southeast Asia.

Your duties and responsibilities include:

• coordinating data collection on the prevalence of Ganoderma Boninense and BSR;
• designing, establishing, and monitoring data collection of field experiments on cover crops;
• supervision of master students supporting your study;
• analysing data and writing papers;
• interpretation of literature, existing and self-collected data towards understanding the mechanisms of disease suppression. 

Function Requirements

You are a team player with good interpersonal skills and an interest in and willingness to work with partners from different cultural backgrounds. You have a strong and demonstrable personal connection with Indonesia or Malaysia, and you are fluent in Bahasa Indonesia (written and spoken). We are looking for a candidate who is an analytical thinker with a problem-solving orientation and is able to adapt research to emerging findings and circumstances. Additionally, the candidate has an interest in sustainable oil palm production and interdisciplinary work.

Specially, the candidate:

• Holds a Master’s degree in a relevant field such as Agronomy, Ecology, or a related discipline with preferably a specialization in plant pathology;
• Has demonstrated experience in conducting research related to plant pathology, controlled and/or observational studies, preferably in an agricultural setting;
• Is capable of working independently but are also keen to work in an interdisciplinary team;
• Has strong written and verbal communication skills, including presenting research findings effectively to both scientific and non-scientific audiences in English and Bahasa Indonesia;

For this position, your command of the English language is expected to be at C1 level. Sometimes, submitting an internationally recognised Certificate of Proficiency in the English Language is necessary. More information can be found here.

Contactinformation

For more information about this position, please contact Maja Slingerland, associate professor and OILCLIPS project lead, at +31 6 14324020, maja.slingerland@wur.nl

For more information about the procedure, please contact Noorien Abbas,  vacaturemeldingen.psg@wur.nl