Thesis subject
Documenting and mapping the origins and diversity of vegetable crops
Increasing the abundance and diversity of vegetables in diets is an important pathway to improving human nutrition and health worldwide. WUR is partnering on the development of a new major global initiative on vegetable diversity, which aims to collect a wide range of major as well as under-utilized vegetable crop varieties, and their wild related species, around the world, conserve these genetic resources in national and international agricultural genebanks, and mobilize this diversity to increase consumption of vegetables particularly in hotspots of malnutrition. To provide a scientific foundation for such a global initiative, WUR is contributing to research aimed at understanding the distributions and conservation status of vegetable crop diversity worldwide.
The student will aid in compiling a new global database on the origins, primary regions of diversity, and secondary regions of diversity of the world’s most important vegetable crop species (over 100 taxa), based on existing literature and data sources, which will be standardized based on major phytogeographic region terminology. The student may also contribute to compiling occurrence data and using these data to identify key geographic regions where diversity in vegetable crop species is particularly rich, as well conducting gap analyses to recognize diverse regions where vegetable genetic resources have not previously been collected for conservation in genebanks. These analyses will result in a published research article(s). Required skills include: attention to detail; database management; understanding of plant taxonomy and distributions; and the ability to code, conduct statistical analyses, and perform geographic analyses (in R).