PhD position: Modelling Crop Growth and Resource Use

Descrizione

Testo originale dell'annuncio (in inglese)

The greenhouse sector is changing rapidly. New cultivation systems, such as single-truss tomatoes, hybrid systems of greenhouses with vertical farms, and semi-closed greenhouses, have the potential to increase resource use efficiency. However, managing and optimizing these new cultivation systems requires crop models that can predict plant growth, crop yield and resource use under highly dynamic conditions. As a PhD candidate, you will develop mechanistic crop models for innovative greenhouse production systems. You will model young plant production in vertical farms, source–sink relationships in single-truss tomato and integrate crop and greenhouse models to evaluate resource use. The models will be developed and validated using existing experimental datasets, complemented with targeted validation experiments where needed. You will work closely with other researchers collecting data on crop growth, development and carbon allocation. This PhD project is part of the Greenhouses in Transition project, which brings together leading universities (e.g. University of Wyoming, Texas A&M, University of Kentucky, TU Delft, University of Twente) and industry partners (e.g. Ridder Group, AMS Institute, Crop King USA, Bosch growers, Addium) from the Netherlands and the United States to accelerate the transition towards sustainable and circular controlled environment agriculture. The research project comprises 8 PhD candidates, 7 postdoctoral researchers and 1 PDEng, allowing close collaboration across disciplines including plant physiology, crop modelling, greenhouse technology and systems engineering. As a PhD candidate, you will work closely with experimental researchers at Wageningen University while interacting with an international network of scientists and stakeholders, contributing to the development of innovative greenhouse systems that improve resource efficiency, reduce fossil energy use and strengthen the resilience of food production across diverse climates and production systems. Your duties and responsibilities include: developing and extending process-based crop models describing physiological processes (e.g. carbon partitioning, organ growth, reproductive development and harvest index) under dynamic environments; designing and conducting targeted climate chamber and greenhouse experiments to improve model parameterization and validate specific physiological mechanisms; integrate crop and greenhouse models to evaluate resource-use efficiency of innovative greenhouse production systems; collaborating with researchers, growers and industry partners within the Greenhouses in Transition consortium to translate scientific insights into practical greenhouse innovations. You will work here The research is embedded within the chair Horticulture and Product Physiology which is led by Prof. Dr Leo Marcelis . You will be co-supervised by Dr. Ana Cristina Zepeda and Dr. Ep Heuvelink.