Postdoctoral Fellow - Soil Health

To lead research on soil health with emphasis on the soil microbiome as part of IRRI’s work on sustainable crop management for rice systems. Research in the soil heath program focuses on understanding trends and developing practical management recommendations related to widely varying water management regimes in diversified rice systems. One part of this job will be to use data from IRRI’s long-term experiments to assess time trend analysis of crop productivity, soil quality, and environmental footprint. Another part of this job will be to develop soil health indicators for use by other internal and external partners to assess sustainability. This job will require systems approaches in the area of resource management including new statistical tools for meta-analysis and molecular tools for understanding soil/plant-microbial interactions. This job will contribute to a number of projects at IRRI (e.g. Closing Rice Yield Gaps in Asia with Reduced Environmental Footprint (CORIGAP), Sustainable Rice Platform, Transforming Rice Management, the Irrigated Rice Research Consortium, and new projects that will start up) and is expected to have test sites at various locations in Asia.

This position is based at IRRI Headquarters, Los Baños Laguna, Philippines.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Use molecular tools, metagenomics, and long-term trend analysis to assess soil health changes caused by specific crop management practices in IRRI’s long- and short-term experimental fields.
• Develop a practical soil health indicator to be used by internal and external partners to monitor changes in the sustainability of the soil ecosystem.
• Evaluate crop management recommendations to assess their effects on methane production and emission, C and N dynamics, and the transformation of trace elements.
• Develop research activities to further elaborate relationships between crop management options and soil health indicators depending on own skills and on identified needs.
• Provide training to partners in monitoring soil health indicators.
• Collaborate effectively with scientists, donors, and extension specialists.
• Publish research findings in peer-reviewed journals and present findings at national and international conferences, workshops and other fora.

Qualifications

Recent Ph.D. in Soil Microbiology, Soil Science, or closely-related discipline

Skills Required

Research experience related to the soil microbiome in the context of sustainability

Preferred:

Demonstrated ability to work outside of home culture, knowledge of rice-based cropping systems.

HOW TO APPLY:

Check full job details on http://jobs.irri.org or copy and paste this URL to your browserhttps://goo.gl/nD7d4N

Submit application through jobs.irri.org (go to "search/visit the IRRI job board" and look for this position - click "apply for job")