Postdoctoral Fellowship in Agronomy

The overarching goal is to develop new knowledge that can lead to improvements in assessment of sugarcane yield variability and sugarcane nitrogen management. To achieve these goals, we will monitor nitrogen treatment field experiments with UAVs to validate vegetation indices used to assess N uptake by sugarcane and to link proximal sensing data with crop modeling. Crop modeling will provide an integrated approach to calculate optimal variable nitrogen rate applications using weather forecasts. The knowledge and tools gained through this proposed project would improve the methods and tools to quantify nitrogen needs of sugarcane, and help farmers implement efficient and sustainable nitrogen management systems at farm and watershed levels.

 

Job Description

The incumbent will integrate the field observation data with process based models to simulate spatial variability of sugarcane yield and nitrogen uptake and quantify the economic advantages of variable rate nitrogen and application time practices to optimize sugarcane production and reduce environmental impacts over space and time.

This opportunity is open to candidates of any nationalities. The selected candidate will receive a São Paulo Research Foundation-FAPESP's Post-Doctoral fellowship in the amount of BRL 7.373,10 monthly and a research contingency fund, equivalent to 15% of the annual value of the fellowship which should be spent in items directly related to the research activity. 

 

The specific tasks of the incumbent 

1. To calibrate the SALUS and DSSAT model with sugarcane cultivars grown in São Paulo State;

2. To evaluate the SALUS and DSSAT model with detailed field experimental data to estimate the model uncertainty for simulating sugarcane yield under different N rates and application times treatments at field and landscape scale;

3. To explore management options for a seasonal rainfall-variable environment to increase sugarcane N fertilizer efficiency and simultaneously optimize sugarcane yields.

More information about the fellowship is at: fapesp.br/oportunidades/2375.

Eligible destination country/ies for fellows: Brazil

Eligibility of fellows: country/ies of residence: All

Eligibility of fellows: nationality/ies: All