PhD fellowship/scholarship - Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of organic vegetable production
Applicants are invited for a PhD fellowship/scholarship at Graduate School of Technical Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark, within the Agroecology programme. The position is available from 01 June 2026 or later. You can submit your application via the link under 'how to apply'.
Title: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of organic vegetable production
Research area and project description:The demand for organic vegetables is increasing. We need to eat more plant-based food, and vegetables are key to improve climate, environment and human health. Vegetable produktion have a high risk of nitrogen losses after harvest, and intensive production methods risks degrading soil quality and fertility.
Catch crops are known as strong tools to reduce nitrogen losses and soil degradation. Undersowing overwintering catch crops into the cash crop (intercropping) has a potential to reduce losses of nitrate, nitrous oxide and soil degradation in organic vegetable production.
However, there is a lack of knowledge on choosing species and management strategies to secure the resource needs of vegetable crops to achieve high yields. There is a need for rethinking and development of catch crop in organic vegetable production, focused on undersown overwintering catch crops to reduce of nitrogen losses and sustain soil fertility and carbon sequestration – and to assess the climate and environmental impacts of alternative practices.
This is the core topic in the Organic RDD project CloseFerVeg.
The main aim of the PhD study is to assess the climate and environmental impacts of major organic vegetable and estimate the effect of including undersown catch crops using life cycle assesment (LCA). The study will be connected to the Oganic RDD project CloseFerVeg.
For this PhD project, we are looking for candidates with knowledge about biological and agricultural systems, environmental impacts along with good analytical and mathematical skills.
You will be part of a team of researchers working on sustainability of food and agricultural systems with many years of experience with life cycle assessment of food. The project will be a collaboration between a team of people at Department of Agroecology, Department of Food Science, HortiAdvice and other partners.In our LCA team at Aarhus University, we are working on a range of closely related LCA projects. Our LCA team is placed in the section of ‘Agricultural Systems and Sustainability’, where our other colleagues are working on other aspects of system research in agriculture such as socio-economic sustainability, organization of food systems, organic livestock systems and sustainable resource management.
- Project description. For technical reasons, you must upload a project description. Please simply copy the project description above and upload it as a PDF in the application.
Applicants to the PhD position must have a relevant Master’s degree within agrobiology, agricultural sciences, biosystems engineering, biology or similar or a Bachelor degree within Agrobiology at Aarhus University.
Place of employment and place of work:The place of employment is Aarhus University, and the place of work is Aarhus University (AU-Viborg), Department of Agroecology, Section for Agricultural Systems and Sustainability, Blichers Alle 20, 8830 Tjele, Denmark.
Contacts:Applicants seeking further information regarding the PhD position are invited to contact:
- Professor Marie Trydeman Knudsen, mariet.knudsen@agro.au.dk (main supervisor)
- Associate Professor Lisbeth Mogensen, lisbeth.mogensen@agro.au.dk (co-supervisor)
For information about application requirements and mandatory attachments, please see our application guide. If answers cannot be found there, please contact:
- admission.gradschool.tech@au.dk
How to apply: Please follow this link to submit your application.
Application deadline is 23 March 2026 at 23:59 CET.
Preferred starting date is 1 June 2026.
Please note:
- Only documents received prior to the application deadline will be evaluated. Thus, documents sent after deadline will not be taken into account.
- The programme committee may request further information or invite the applicant to attend an interview.
- Shortlisting will be used, which means that the evaluation committee only will evaluate the most relevant applications.
All interested candidates are encouraged to apply, regardless of their personal background. Salary and terms of employment are in accordance with applicable collective agreement.
Please note in your application that you found the job at Jobindex