Principal Scientist I - Montpellier, France - ICRISAT

Description

ICRISAT seeks applications from dynamic Indian nationals as Principal Scientist I – Nutrition and Nutri-sensitive Food Systems for the Drylands . The incumbent will report to the Global Research Program Director in Enabling Systems Transformation. The position is based at ICRISAT Headquarters, Patancheru, Telangana, India.

ICRISAT is a non-profit, non-political organization that conducts agricultural research for development in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa with a wide array of partners throughout the world. Covering 6.5 million square kilometers of land in 55 countries, the semi- arid or dryland tropics has over 2 billion people and 644 million of these are the poorest of the poor. ICRISAT and its partners help empower these disadvantaged populations to overcome poverty, hunger and a degraded environment through better agricultural production systems.

ICRISAT is headquartered at Patancheru near Hyderabad, India, with two regional hubs and eight country offices in sub-Saharan Africa. ICRISAT envisions a prosperous, food-secure and resilient dryland tropics. Its mission is to reduce poverty, hunger, malnutrition and environmental degradation in the dryland tropics. ICRISAT conducts research on its mandate crops of chickpea, pigeonpea, groundnut, sorghum, pearl millet and finger millet in the arid and semi-arid tropics. The Institute focuses its work on the drylands and in protecting the environment. Tropical dryland areas are usually seen as resource-poor and perennially beset by shocks such as drought, thereby trapping dryland communities in poverty and hunger and making them dependent on external aid. –

Position Objective:

Provide strategic direction and steer the Nutrition and Nutri-sensitive Food Systems strategy of ICRISAT towards promoting dietary diversity, sustainable livelihood opportunities leading to food & nutritional security in the drylands. Strengthen and promote Inclusive Market Oriented Development (IMOD) model and Smart Food initiative of ICRISAT, ensuring inclusiveness of smallholder farming communities into the nutri-sensitive value chains, through local value chain innovations involving the dryland crops through: understanding of their market potential, nutritional and functional traits, development and promotion of value addition and related technologies for mainstreaming the dryland crops, establishing sustainable agro-food processing enterprises (involving rural/tribal women and youth), primary and secondary level. Establish local nutri-sensitive and market oriented, enabling ecosystems to create sustainable demand pull for the dryland crops. Promote and create awareness on food quality, traceability, food safety and food safety management systems across the food value chain from farm to fork, leveraging strategic partnerships with key stakeholders, involving both the public and private sector.

Responsibilities:

Requirement:

General:

This is a contractual role for a period of 36 months (3 years).