Future-proofing celery with pangenomics, trials, and AI-assisted gene discovery (DE-VEGA_E27CASE)

Can we stay ahead of an emerging crop disease before it becomes established in Europe? This PhD will use genomics to future-proof celery against Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. apii race 4, a highly virulent pathogen that threatens celery production globally.

Working alongside industry collaborators at Tozer Seeds, you will use cutting-edge genomics to help future-proof celery breeding by identifying independent sources of resistance and translating them into practical breeding solutions.

We have evidence of independent sources of resistance to this pathogen in celery, which need to be characterised before they can be incorporated into more durable cultivars against a rapidly evolving pathogen.

You will analyse a large celery diversity panel, including advanced lines, landraces, naturalised and wild material. You will learn population genomics, evolutionary analysis, structural variation and pangenomic studies at the interface of crop genomics, plant pathology and breeding.

The project will be based at the Earlham Institute, a world-class BBSRC research centre of excellence in genomics, engineering, computational biology and AI. Working in collaboration with Tozer Seeds, you will join a highly collaborative and supportive research community and have access to training and career development opportunities across the Norwich Research Park through the Norwich Research Park Biosciences Doctoral Training Partnership.

You will study how celery performs under high disease pressure in large field trials, exploring resistance-associated loci through genome-wide analyses, including SNP-, k-mer-, haplotype- and pangenome-based approaches. You will also use time-course RNA-seq to investigate how celery responds during infection, asking whether independent resistance sources trigger distinct or shared defence pathways. In the final phase, you will shape your own direction using comparative genomics, NLRome analysis, AI-assisted candidate-gene prioritisation with genomic and protein language models, and breeding genetics.

This project’s core value is translation: turning genomic diversity into practical disease-resistance strategies for sustainable vegetable production. It will build transferable skills in bioinformatics, statistics, reproducible analysis, stakeholder communication and industry-facing research. It will prepare you for careers in crop genomics, plant breeding, agri-tech, bioinformatics, R&D, or academic plant science.