Postdoctoral Fellow : Coventry, United Kingdom
A Systems Approach to Disease Resistance Against Necrotrophic Fungal Pathogens The aim of this project is to identify sources of disease resistance in lettuce against Botrytis cinerea and Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, two economically important fungal pathogens. Furthermore we will evaluate the ability of systems biology approaches to facilitate breeding of quantitative resistance in horticultural crops. Transcriptome profiling and network analysis, combined with quantitative genetic studies (mapping populations and diversity sets), will identify novel alleles and associated markers for increasing the resistance of lettuce to both B. cinerea and S. sclerotiorum.
Description
You will carry out plant pathogen infection studies, quantitative genetic analysis of disease resistance, gene expression profiling, genotyping and transformation in lettuce. You will liaise extensively with project staff at Harper Adams University and with industrial partners. You will have a good honours degree and possession (or near submission) of a PhD in relevant discipline along with excellent molecular biology skills as well as the drive to be involved in crop science research. Ideally you will also have experience in quantitative genetics and genome mapping, and experience in plant-pathogen interactions.
