Organizational Context
The present research project entitled: “Exploring options to enhance biological nitrogen fixation and yield of soybean and common bean in smallholder farming systems of Rwanda” is implemented within the framework of the N2Africa project: Putting nitrogen fixation to work for smallholder farmers in Africa. We hypothesise that successful nitrogen fixation and productivity of legumes in the field depend on the interaction between legume genotypes and rhizobium genotypes as influenced by environment and management. Based on the role of common bean and soybean in the farmers diet and income generation, and considering the growth of the population, the decrease in soil fertility and cost of nitrogen (N) fertilizers, the cultivation of legumes can play an important role in sustaining agricultural productivity given legumes’ ability to fix nitrogen, which can help to reduce the need for nitrogen-based fertilizers.
The present PhD project will evaluate the factors affecting the competition for nodules occupancy and survival of introduced rhizobia in soils, and will unravel the causal factors limiting the success in nitrogen fixation and grain yield increases in common bean and soybean across various environmental conditions of Rwanda via field trials and laboratory work.
Roles
Dr Linus Franke is the daily supervisor and co-promoter, Prof Bernard Vanlauwe is the local supervisor and Prof. Ken Giller is the overall and promoter of the PhD student.
I am responsible of my data collection. However, the technicians and partners of N2Africa-Rwanda help in sites selection and data collection if needed.
All the data collected in this project will be analysed by myself, in close collaboration with my supervisors.
Short and long term storage
All data will be stored on my local harddisk in a folder called Thesis.
Within this Thesis folder, I'll create per chapter the folders: Data, Model, Paper and Scripts. The Data folder has two sub-folders called: Raw and Processed.
Folder contents:
- Data - Raw sub-folder: Contains all raw data and meta-data (a description of your data).
- Data - Processed sub-folder: Contains all processed data.
- Model folder: Complete listing of the model and the model results & analysis.
- Paper folder: Text of a chapter / paper.
- Scripts folder: Contains all scripts used.
The complete content of my local Thesis folder will be stored on the backup server of PPS.
During periods I'm abroad, I'll backup the complete content of my local Thesis folder to a Dropbox Thesis folder and share the contents with my supervisor(s).
All datasets used for my project, analysis reports, publications, posters.
None
Sharing and Ownership
At the end of my PhD project, N2Africa project as well as my supervisors will be given a full copy of my data. Data will be made publically available at the discretion of supervisors at the end of my PhD project.
Once I leave, my data will be found on the back-up server on phd.pps.wur.nl website as described above.
None
N2Africa project and Rwanda Agriculture Board(RAB) may share data if needed.
No other persons involved directely to this project except my supervisors.
N2Africa Project has responsibility to the data collected in this project as the main sponsor. Rwanda Agriculture Board as the
main partner in this project also may have access to the data after consultation with the PhD student.
I believe that the phd.pps.wur.nl site is secure enough.