PhD Studentship: Future-Proofing Celery with Pangenomics, Trials, and AI-assisted Gene Discovery

Overview

This PhD studentship focuses on future-proofing celery against Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. apii race 4, a virulent pathogen threatening global celery production. The project involves working alongside industry collaborators at Tozer Seeds to use cutting-edge genomics to identify independent sources of resistance and translate them into practical breeding solutions.

The successful candidate will be based at the Earlham Institute, a BBSRC research centre of excellence, and will join the Norwich Research Park Biosciences Doctoral Training Partnership. The work combines population genomics, evolutionary analysis, structural variation, and pangenomic studies at the interface of crop genomics, plant pathology, and breeding.

What you get

The 4-year PhD CASE studentship includes the payment of tuition fees directly to the University of East Anglia and a stipend to cover living expenses, aligned with the 2026/27 stipend rate of £21,805 per annum. Additionally, recipients receive a Research Training Support Grant of £5,000 per year for each year of the studentship.

Requirements

Candidates will analyse a large celery diversity panel consisting of advanced lines, landraces, naturalised material, and wild material. The research involves studying plant performance under high disease pressure in large field trials and exploring resistance-associated loci through genome-wide analyses using SNP, k-mer, haplotype, and pangenome-based approaches.

Students will also use time-course RNA-seq to examine plant responses during infection and utilize comparative genomics, NLRome analysis, and AI-assisted candidate-gene prioritisation with genomic and protein language models in the final phase of the project.