Research Fellow II

Responsibilities

• Develop, coordinate, and conduct research projects focused on crop improvement, disease resistance, plant pathology, molecular breeding, genomics, and field-based phenotyping.
• Design and implement greenhouse, laboratory, and field experiments to screen soybean, cotton, and related crop germplasm and breeding populations for resistance to economically important fungal, bacterial, viral, nematode, and emerging diseases, including target spot, Cercospora leaf blight, bacterial blight, areolate mildew, Fusarium wilt, root-knot nematode, and reniform nematode.
• Conduct pathogen isolation, culturing, inoculum preparation, pathogenicity assays, disease phenotyping, and molecular identification of plant pathogens.
• Perform molecular and genomic analyses, including DNA/RNA extraction, PCR, RT-qPCR, SNP genotyping, marker-assisted selection, and preparation of samples for next-generation sequencing.
• Analyze phenotypic, genotypic, transcriptomic, and multi-environment trial datasets using appropriate statistical, genomic, and bioinformatics approaches.
• Coordinate field trials, including experimental design, planting, plot management, disease and agronomic data collection, harvest, seed processing, and data management.
• Assist with breeding population development and germplasm improvement, including crossing, population advancement, trait evaluation, selection, and evaluation of agronomic, quality, disease resistance, and stress tolerance traits.

Qualifications

• Level II: Ph.D. in plant breeding, crop science, genetics, plant pathology, molecular biology, biotechnology or a closely related field.
• 2 years of postdoctoral experience in relevant research in crop sciences, molecular breeding, genomics, plant pathology, or related agricultural research.
• Desired Qualifications: Experience conducting applied plant breeding and disease resistance research in soybean, cotton, or other agronomic crops, including crossing, breeding population advancement, germplasm evaluation, disease screening, controlled inoculation assays, and selection of resistant or improved breeding lines. Experience molecular breeding, genomics, SNP genotyping, GWAS, QTL analysis, RNA-seq or transcriptomic analysis, pathogen identification, and use of statistical tools such as R, SAS, or related software. Experience managing field research operations, breeding trials, disease nurseries, or greenhouse screening experiments. Experience preparing grant proposals, manuscripts, research reports, conference presentations, and project-related documents.