Assistant Breeder

KWS Group

KWS is one of the world’s leading plant breeding companies. Over 5,000 employees in more than 70 countries generated net sales of around €1.8 billion in the fiscal year 2022/2023. A company with a tradition of family ownership, KWS has operated independently for 165 years. It focuses on plant breeding and the production and sale of seed for corn, sugar beet, cereals, vegetables, oilseed rape and sunflower. KWS uses leading-edge plant breeding methods to continuously improve yield for farmers and plants’ resistance to diseases, pests, and abiotic stress. To that end, the company invested more than €300 million last fiscal year in research and development. 

Assistant Breeder

As part of our growth strategy and our plans, we are looking for an Assistant Breeder Cucumber, based at KWS Vegetables for our location in Antalya, southern Turkey. Together with the Breeder the Assistant Breeder gives direction to the breeding program in designing and executing the process of continuous variety creation and development in cucumber, allowing a short time-to-market and within the budget set for the breeding program in order to develop commercially successful varieties.

Key duties:

• Assist and support the Breeder in optimizing the efficiency and output of the breeding program by designing and implementing new technologies and breeding methods in order to ensure a constant flow of commercially successful varieties.
• Design, evaluate and formulate with the Breeder the short-term breeding plan, the work process and performance by means of drawing up trial data in filing system, preparing summary reports, give feedback, make proposals and draw conclusions about the breeding program in order to facilitate, and enable divisional and corporate decision making.
• Design and plan and after approval of the Breeder, implement, execute, evaluate, analyze, interpret and document autonomously breeding trials and their results in line with the breeding plan, guidelines and procedures, in order to optimize the efficiency and output of the breeding program.
• Manage and execute the increase and maintenance of basic stock seed in coordination with the Breeder, Stock Seed and/or Production departments to ensure the availability of the quantity and quality of basic stock seeds.
• Manage an accurate and detailed breeding administration and implement new ICT- systems in cooperation with the IT Application Manager, within the breeding team and conform the procedures and guidelines in the breeding department, to enable the running of an efficient and effective breeding program.
• Coordinate and communicate the breeding program activities to the technical assistant(s) and the crop technicians within the breeding team and provide them with technical advice in order to meet agreed standards, time planning and budgets.
• Develop and maintain updated and broad vision on the market demands and translate market demands into breeding goals in order to be able to act for the breeder as an equal discussion partner on all breeding issues.

Experience and skills:

• BSc in horticulture, plant breeding, genetics or closely related field;
• Working knowledge of horticultural practices and procedures, genetics and plant breeding;
• Few years of experience in plant breeding;
• Language skills (English and Turkish);
• Good communication and analytical skills;
• Team player and good interpersonal skills.
• Computer skills: management information systems, databases, spread sheets

We are looking forward to your application using our online application system SuccessFactors! Please click the “Apply” button which you can find in the online ad.