Master Work offer maize traits

Company : Limagrain Europe
Location : Pocking (Bavaria - Germany)
Period : 6 months - Start : February-March 2025
Level : Master of Science (M.Sc.)
 

Master Work offer: "Optimization of genomic selection calibration to predict maize traits"

Context:

Limagrain as the 4th largest seed company in the world with about 9,500 employees working in 53 countries breeds, produces, and sells high value-added field and vegetable seeds, drawing on our long history of expertise in plant improvement. The world faces escalating climatic, environmental and demographic challenges, and our various businesses help address its food and farming issues. We devote particular effort to understanding, dissecting and managing the most important agronomic characteristics to deliver the varieties best suited to farmers' needs.

Genomic selection (GS) has revolutionized plant breeding by enabling the prediction of complex traits using genomic data. The optimization of breeding schemes in maize is crucial for enhancing both primary traits (yield and quality) and secondary traits (disease resistance, agronomics, and seed production). This project aims simulation study with existing calibrations to improve models and subsequently breeding scheme. 

We offer an internship during which the student will be integrated into an operational breeding team, will be a link with the Support Teams, which assist this research (Biostatistics, Native Traits) and with other breeding teams in Europe. The research work carried out by the student will be focused on a group of calibrations to deliver better data sets, taking into account trait heritabilities and correlations for the main traits. The goal is to reduce phenotyping costs while maintaining or improving selection accuracy.

Main activities:

Integrating GS with traditional breeding methods requires careful calibration and validation. Breeders need to balance the use of GS with conventional phenotypic selection to ensure the development of robust varieties. By leveraging advanced genomic tools and optimizing phenotyping strategies, breeders can achieve higher prediction accuracy and genetic gain, ultimately leading to the development of superior maize varieties.

To do this, the mission will consist of (1) reviewing the bibliography on the main components of GS calibration, (2) ensuring that the training set includes individuals representing the genetic diversity and with a wide range of phenotypic variation for the traits of interest, (3) continuously refining the training set by adding or removing individuals based on model performance, (4) using cross-validation techniques to test the performance of the GS models with different training sets, (5) evaluating the balance between phenotyping and prediction to optimize resource allocation, (6) optimizing breeding schemes that reduce phenotyping costs and improve trait selection, (7) sharing data and collaborating with other breeding programs.

During the period of March to August the student will also be exposed to the successive steps of a breeding program through participating to various steps of its workflow. This will provide him/her insight into (1) how a breeding program is operating and (2) how time consuming are some critical steps like phenotyping. This will help in making decision to propose optimization of the global breeding scheme. 

The intern will be supervised by the breeder responsible for the breeding program in our Pocking station (Bavaria). The project will be managed via a working group, which will involve people and skills useful to this project: selection, statistics, genetic dissection of traits. He/She will have the opportunity to develop know-how in plant improvement, statistics, data management and genomic selection tools, as well as to expand their knowledge in the genetics of agronomic traits. A wide range of tools and data will be made available during the master work to achieve the expected results.

Profil requests:

• Master of Science (M.Sc.)
• Knowledge: Plant breeding – Quantitative Genetics - Data analysis – Statistics 
• Language: English fluent
• Driving licence

Payment:

• 1.000 € per month

Contact Master Project Supersivor:

Send CV and Letter of Application to Eduard Lazarescu : Breeder for Silage and dual purpose Maize varieties at Pocking Station (Bavaria).

Phone: +49 171 632 9101

E-mail: eduard.lazarescuspam prevention@limagrain.de

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