PHD offer: Innovating crop rotations as nature-based solutions for adaptation to climate change - M/F

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INRAE presentation

The French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE) is a major player in research and innovation. It is a community of 12,000 people with 272 research, experimental research, and support units located in 18 regional centres throughout France. Internationally, INRAE is among the top research organisations in the agricultural and food sciences, plant and animal sciences, as well as in ecology and environmental science. It is the world’s leading research organisation specialising in agriculture, food and the environment. INRAE’s goal is to be a key player in the transitions necessary to address major global challenges. Faced with a growing world population, climate change, resource scarcity, and declining biodiversity, the Institute has a major role to play in building solutions and supporting the necessary acceleration of agricultural, food and environmental transitions.

Work environment, missions and activities

The PhD will be based at the UMR Agroécologie at INRAE Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in Dijon, as part of the TRANSFORM project (https://www.transform-rotations.eu), funded under the EU Horizon Mission Adaptation to Climate Change. It will explore the innovation of climate-resilient crop rotations, for climate adaptation, and will be supervised by INRAE, Wageningen University (NL) and the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UK), with opportunities to travel and work at these locations during the PhD.

The rate of climate change is accelerating with the potential for catastrophic impacts on the agriculture of Europe. Arable crops are grown in sequences, called rotations, which have been used for hundreds of years as agronomic managements that modulate nature-based processes of disturbance, succession and plant community heterogeneity. Rotations also determine economic viability, via crop yields, as well environmental effects such as water quality and biodiversity. Over the past 50 years, with an increasing reliance on agrochemicals that replace nature-based processes, rotational sequences have become simplified. This low diversity is a risk, because climate change threatens the agronomic, socio-economic and environmental performance of the few crops currently grown. Innovation of new rotations, incorporating new crops and crop varieties, is a critical challenge if European agriculture is to adapt to climate change.

In this PhD project, the student will work with crop modellers, agroecologists and social scientists to explore how to adapt existing crop models, such as WOFOST^[1], and their outputs to take account of rotations in their predictions of climate change impacts. The PhD will then explore how these rotational outputs can be presented to farmers via interactive digital tools like the prototype Future Rotations Explorer^[2],[3], to better representing crop rotations and farmers’ needs for their agronomic decision-making. This would include modelling and software development, and will be supported by specialists in programming and in user-centred design and co-development to ensure that the tools are ‘farmer-centric’.

The PhD student will be responsible for :

• Simulation of existing models of crop performance and rotation to identify their performance under different scenarios of climate change;
• Construction of rules to modify crop model outputs to appropriately represent nature-based rotational effects;
• Work with farmers and other scientists to co-develop ‘farmer-centric’ specifications for rotation-innovation tools;
• Develop a new version of the Future Rotations Explorer version 2 that combines the results achieved during the PhD for use in TRANSFORM;
• Publish and communicate the results of the project.

 

[1] https://www.wur.nl/en/research-results/research-institutes/environmental-research/facilities-tools/software-models-and-databases/wofost.htm

[2] https://connect-apps.ceh.ac.uk/prear-future-rotations-explorer/

[3] Bohan et al. (2022) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2022.07.006

Special working conditions (possible constraints/on-call duty, frequent travel, etc.) :

The work will be carried out as part of a large-scale European project, requiring travel and collaboration with the project partners' teams in different countries. It will also be necessary to attend the project's biannual meetings (in person and/or by videoconference).

Training and skills

Recommended training: Masters in Agronomy, Agriculture, Biology, Ecology, Computer Science or equivalent.

Preferred skills: Programming, such as R, RShiny, Python and/or Rust

Preferred experience: Statistical modelling

Skills required: Ability to communicate orally and in writing in English. A good knowledge of French is required.

INRAE's life quality

By joining our teams, you benefit from (depending on the type of contract and its duration):
- Up to 30 days holiday + 15 RTT per year (for full-time employees)
- Skills development programmes: training, career guidance...
- Social support and benefits: counselling and listening, social assistance and loans, CESU…
- Holiday, leisure, sports, cultural and family services: Holiday vouchers, preferential accommodation; preferential tickets
- canteen with picnic area
- Partial reimbursement of commuting costs by the employer
- authorised teleworking, subject to the conditions laid down by current legislation
- partial reimbursement of supplementary social security contributions
- SNC annual leave card
- Easy access to the INRAE Dijon Centre by tram, bus + bike, car park, etc.
- Access to the Dijon FMR² association (Freshly and Temporarily Recruited in Research)
 

How to apply

Send a cover letter and CV to : 

Dr David A. Bohan

By e-mail: David.Bohan@inrae.fr

By post: INRAE, Centre Bourogne-Franche-Comté, UMR Agroécologie, 17 rue Sully, 21065 Dijon, France