Senior Maize Breeder at IITA - International Institute of Tropical Agriculture

• The successful candidate will design, execute, and manage the maize breeding program, while also coordinating a breeding network targeting the West African maize prioritized market segments.
• The successful candidate will work closely with local partner organizations, including CGIAR and NARES institutions, as well as other partners, to establish a crossing and evaluation program aimed at delivering superior varieties that support rapid adoption by farmers.
• This position reports to Maize Breeding Head.

Position Responsibilities

• Breeding Strategy: Formulating breeding strategies aimed at achieving specific goals, such as increasing yield, improving stress tolerance, or enhancing nutritional content.
• Product Design and Development: Implement an effective breeding strategy to develop elite breeding material and a product advancement process to identify new candidate varieties for targeted market segments and product profiles.
• Demand-led Breeding: Support and contribute to revision of market segment definition and product profile development and seed system activities in the region.
• Germplasm Development: Working with NARS and selected partners, identify, obtain and develop appropriate germplasm to sustain the breeding program.
• Coordination: Coordinate the development of a stage gate multilocation product performance testing strategy, data analysis and advancement process, which is aligned with target market segments, TPEs or Agro-ecologies.
• Optimization of Breeding Processes and Operations: Ensure cost effective breeding operations, and standard operating procedures that deliver agreed quality and performance indicators.

Collaboration and Partnerships:

• Develop strong partnerships with national public breeding programs to collaboratively identify critical germplasm, product needs and define complementary breeding objectives.
• Enable and actively support the regional crop network to collaboratively plan and implement breeding activities that optimize the development of individual and shared network germplasm products and builds capacity to share knowledge, best practices, training etc.
• Capacity Building: Provide training and mentorship to breeding staff, partners and scholars on breeding techniques, methodologies, data analysis and scientific communication.
• Resource Mobilisation: Contribute to or lead the development of research proposals and other fundraising activities.
• Publication: Lead or contribute to publication of research results in international, refereed journals.
• Reporting: Produce monthly and annual reports.

Requirements

• The candidate should have a PhD in plant breeding, genetics, or a related field.

Core Competencies

• At least 10 years of experience in plant breeding.
• Evidence of significant management skills including change management and management of successful breeding teams.
• Experience applying quantitative genetics principles, genomics and latest breeding technologies is desired.
• Experience working in West Africa will be considered favourably.
• Strong networking and facilitating skills with focus on enabling and empowering others to succeed.
• Demonstrated ability to work in multicultural and diverse environments.
• Excellent interpersonal, analytical and organizational skills.
• Successful experience and commitment to inclusive research design and implementation.
• Evidence of experience in resource mobilization.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills.