We are seeking a talented and inspired Tissue Culture Specialist to become a key member of Alora’s team. As we embark on a mission to create a truly sustainable agriculture system the successful candidate will hold a pivotal role within Alora, developing the world’s first oceanic rice plants.

For this position, Alora is seeking someone with an expertise and a wealth of knowledge in plant cell culture, ideally from callus tissue culture to protoplast isolation and cell suspension in rice or a wide variety of crops. The daily role will be to generate and manage the pipeline for all tissue culture, growing to lead the tissue culture team as we scale. We seek someone with the ability and interest to innovate upon our current tissue culture methods and with the knowledge to cultivate tissue from a wide array of species and crops. A key eye for detail and observation is critical for the role. Being able to multitask with multiple ongoing experiments with a small team.

Alora is the Ocean Agriculture company, we have designed a way to grow crops in oceanic saltwater. Creating farms floating on the ocean to create truly sustainable agriculture. This is an exciting and dynamic position focused on the future of agriculture. We encourage everyone to bring a unique perspective and all their experience to this skilled role. The successful candidate will have an in-depth understanding of plant biology, that will ideally include plant tissue culture, development and physiology.

Rice is currently the core crop for Alora’stechnology, but increasing this to include model organisms such as Brachypodium distachyon or other important crops such as soybean will be a priority.
Additional experimental opportunities include trials investigating diazotrophic nitrogen fixation and optimisation. This is a diverse and exciting role with plenty of opportunity for high growth.

We are a startup, born in Yorkshire, shaped in San Francisco, cultivated in Ontario, and returning proudly to our roots int he UK. To all motivated questioners ready to be part of the team working to solve world hunger we look forward to meeting you!

Salary Range: £26,000 - £32,000

‍

On a day-to-day, responsibilities of the successful candidate will include:

• Perform regular batches of callus induction from rice seed.
• Perform regular protoplast isolations and cell suspension batches.
• Manage the pipeline of tissue culture and protoplast generation to ensure sufficient cultured material available for the molecular and glasshouse team.
• Subculture embryogenic rice calli.
• Innovate upon all methods to improve the efficiency of our process and find new methods to culture various species.
• Refresh culture media for regenerating rice calli.
• Taking measurements and collecting data from calli, regenerating plantlets and assist, if necessary, in collecting data from glasshouse and aquarium trials.
• Collect and prepare tissue samples for RNA & DNA extraction.
• Cataloguing plants and samples for other team members to continue further experimental phases.
• Maintain and clean equipment.

‍

Key requirements and skills include:

• Minimum Biosciences Bachelor's degree or similar, with a focus on plant biology, or equivalent experience.
• At least 3+ years of experience in a role involving cell culture.
• Demonstrated affinity for cell culture, ideally with rice.
• Experience of working within a scientific team, bonus but non-essential if this was within a startup environment.
• Communication skills, both written and oral.
• Proficiency with data management and excel.
• A key eye for detail and multitasking with multiple ongoing experiments.
• An inspired imagination for improving upon concepts, designs & experimental procedures.

We look forward to hearing from you!