PhD position in Crop Phenotyping (PhenoMix project)

Project background

This doctoral student position is part of the project “PhenoMix: Multidimensional field phenotyping of crop mixtures”, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The position is hosted by the Crop Science group; a vibrant and interdisciplinary working group in the Institute of Agricultural Sciences at the Department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zurich. Our group’s phenotyping research focuses on the development of methods and models to determine traits of relevance for crop breeding and variety testing.

PhenoMix is a joint project of four research groups at ETH Zurich, the Swiss Data Science Center and Agroscope. The overall objective of PhenoMix is to test the hypothesis that current high throughput field phenotyping (HTFP) technology in combination with plant physiological assessments and data science can provide a breakthrough to determine genotypes that can be successfully combined in agroecologically beneficial legume-cereal mixtures. Different varieties of pea and lentil as well as wheat, oats and barley will be grown under our field phenotyping platform FIP (FIP – Crop Science | ETH Zurich), on a neighbouring experimental field and on farmer’s fields. PhenoMix Work Packages address phenotyping, plant ecophysiology, data science, and agro-economic assessments with four doctoral students, two postdocs and several technicians assigned to those work packages. The Crop Phenotyping doctoral student will contribute to collecting HTFP data, improving phenotyping workflows and developing a field robot for lean phenotyping.

Job description

This doctoral project will form an important cornerstone in the mosaic of the entire project with specific tasks depending on skills, interests and alignment with at least two postdoctoral projects for which recruiting is also going on currently. Overall tasks of the project include:

• Collection of HTFP data from various phenotyping devices such as the FIP (multi-view RGB imaging), drones, handheld and manual devices
• Contribution to the design and/or establishment of a phenotyping robot that can acquire data from RGB cameras and potentially other sensors
• Improving phenotyping workflows and models to extract traits such as canopy height, canopy cover, tillering, reflectance, senescence or growth dynamics from this data
• Performing statistical analyses, including AI-based approaches
• Presentation of results at national and international events and publication in peer-reviewed journals
• Assistance in plot establishment, maintenance, and harvest across all Work Packages of PhenoMix.

Profile

• A Master’s degree in agricultural, data or engineering sciences, or a closely related field
• Experience with fieldwork
• Good statistical skills
• Programming experience (e.g. in R or Python)
• Good standard of written and spoken English
• Good writing skills
• Driver’s license
• Ability to work in a team with an interdisciplinary background
• Experience in crop phenotyping and good oral communication skills in German are beneficial

We offer

• Your job with impact: Become part of ETH Zurich, which not only supports your professional development, but also actively contributes to positive change in society
• You can expect numerous benefits, such as public transport season tickets and car sharing, a wide range of sports offered by the ASVZ, childcare and attractive pension benefits