Research Assistant - Breeding Data Management at IITA - International Institute of Tropical Agriculture

DUTIES

• Support the Breeding Data Manager in the adoption, implementation, and routine use of the Enterprise Breeding System (EBS) for storing, managing, retrieving, and reporting breeding information.
• Assist breeding teams with electronic data capture, including the preparation, testing, and validation of digital field books and data-collection templates.
• Curate essential breeding data, including locations, traits, germplasm records, pedigrees, experimental metadata, and germplasm attributes, before loading them into EBS.
• Use R scripts or other reproducible tools for data cleaning, validation, duplicate identification, germplasm matching, site curation, data transformation, and routine reporting across breeding datasets.
• Execute database queries and extract data into approved templates, reports, dashboards, and other formats based on clearly defined requirements.
• Update and maintain Power BI dashboards for monitoring breeding activities, data quality, phenotypic-data completeness, germplasm information, experimental metadata, training activities, and other agreed performance indicators.
• Apply institutional and international research data management standards and best practices, including crop ontologies, trait dictionaries, standard phenotyping protocols, data-quality rules, controlled vocabularies, templates, and digital field books.
• Maintain appropriate documentation of data-curation activities, data uploads, analytical scripts, database queries, dashboard updates, quality-control results, user-support requests, and completed assignments.
• Prepare periodic updates on completed activities, data-quality findings, analytical outputs, dashboard status, user-support needs, system-related challenges, and recommended follow-up actions.
• Perform any other job-related duties that may be assigned by the Supervisor.

Requirements

QUALIFICATION

• Bachelor’s degree or Higher National Diploma in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Agricultural Science, Plant Breeding, Bioinformatics, Information Technology, or a related discipline with a minimum of two (2) years’ of relevant experience in data management, database support, agricultural research, breeding-data management, or a related field will be an added advantage.

COMPETENCIES

The ideal candidate must have:

• Proficiency in Microsoft Excel, including formulas, pivot tables, data validation, lookups, and data-cleaning functions.
• Working knowledge of R or Python for data cleaning, transformation, duplicate identification, descriptive statistics, visualization, and reproducible reporting.
• Ability to develop, update, and maintain Power BI dashboards, including data preparation, data modeling, visualization, filtering, and routine refreshes.
• Working knowledge of SQL and the ability to query relational databases, extract required information, and populate approved reporting templates.
• Ability to perform basic descriptive and exploratory analyses, including frequencies, means, ranges, measures of variability, missing-data assessments, and comparisons across trials, locations, seasons, and breeding pipelines.
• Familiarity with electronic data-collection tools, digital field books, standardized templates, trait dictionaries, crop ontologies, and phenotyping protocols.
• Familiarity with the Enterprise Breeding System, BreedBase, BrAPI-enabled applications, or other breeding data-management platforms would be an advantage.
• Ability to document scripts, data-processing procedures, quality-control checks, dashboard indicators, and user-support activities.