IRS26126 Maize Plant Health Scientist

• Define CIMMYT GMP’s long-term plant health strategy and regions.
• Align disease priorities with breeding pipelines, climate projections, and food security risks.
• Establish CIMMYT as the global authority on maize disease risk in low- and middle-income countries.

• Integrate field surveillance, genomics, remote sensing, and climate data into predictive disease models.
• Apply machine learning to forecast outbreaks, pathogen evolution, and resistance breakdown.
• Develop open dashboards and early warning tools accessible to national partners.

• Optimize disease screening and assays for maize breeding for field application
• Design and execute pathology trials that are scientifically rigorous, reproducible, and aligned with breeding program goals.
• Generate high-quality disease resistance data that supports decision-making in breeding, product advancement, and regulatory submissions.
• Ensure compliance with relevant biosafety, ethical, and quality assurance standards.

• Establish genetic disease resistance as the cornerstone of crop protection by guiding breeding strategies, prioritizing durable resistance approaches, and informing trait deployment to minimize pathogen adaptation.
• Integrate pathogen genomics and population biology to monitor and anticipate pathogen evolution.
• Translate pathogen intelligence into actionable breeding and deployment strategies that slow adaptation and extend product life cycles.
• Establish a comprehensive pathogen intelligence framework that integrates genomic characterization, surveillance of emerging variants, and translation of insights into breeding and trait deployment strategies, ensuring durable crop resistance and proactive disease management.

• Establish and oversee comprehensive seed health testing protocols to detect and prevent seed-borne pathogens.
• Ensure disease-free seed production systems through strict monitoring, sanitation, and certification processes.
• Implement and maintain phytosanitary procedures aligned with national and international regulatory frameworks.
• Facilitate safe seed movement across borders by ensuring compliance with international standards (e.g., ISTA, IPPC).
• Provide technical guidance to breeding and production teams to integrate seed health into product advancement pipelines.

• Develop an integrated, multi-dimensional maize disease risk data platform that consolidates epidemiological, agronomic, and environmental datasets to enable robust modeling of pathogen dynamics and inform breeding, management, and deployment strategies.
• Develop standardized data formats to ensure compatibility across epidemiology and agronomy inputs.
• Model disease dynamics across cropping systems, landscapes, and management practices.
• Integrate agronomic and farmer behavior data into disease risk assessments.
• Design disease management strategies suitable for low-input systems.

• Build and lead global plant health partnerships by coordinating with NARS, CGIAR centers, universities, and international agencies to align strategies and resources for transboundary and emerging disease response.
• Strengthen national and institutional capacity through mentoring scientists, developing training programs, sharing protocols, and ensuring sustainability of plant health systems via institutional strengthening and knowledge transfer.
• Publish in top-tier journals on pathogen biology, disease forecasting, and resistance durability.
• Develop and deliver donor proposals and investment cases that translate complex plant health risks into compelling, data driven narratives focused on disease surveillance and resistance.
• Engage and partner with donors to strengthen proactive global disease risk management and ensure sustained support for resilient plant health systems.
• Represent CIMMYT at global forums and advise governments and international bodies on biosecurity, climate risk, food systems, and disease preparedness and response.
• Strengthening CIMMYT’s visibility and credibility as a trusted, neutral authority in global plant health and food security.

• Ph.D. in plant pathology or any other closely related crop protection field from an internationally recognized university.
• Minimum +5 years Post-Ph.D experience.
• A publication record in high-impact Journals related to Plant Pathology.
• Working experience in disease screening under natural and artificial inoculations for key maize diseases is a great advantage.
• Good knowledge of international seed exchange and phytosanitary guidelines.
• Working knowledge of data analysis software like R, SAS, and Genstat preferred.
• Good reporting and communication skills in English (working language).
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills to manage complex collaborator relations, including experienced breeders, social scientists, and crop protection experts.
• Track record of flexibility, adaptability, well organized and working under pressure with tight deadlines.
• Willing to travel widely in East and Southern Africa.
• Able to excel in a fast-paced, dynamic team environment and possess skills to manage support staff.
• The selected candidate should exhibit the following competencies: Problem Solving and Decision Making, Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, Teamwork, and Communication.

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