New pearl

Participants : Sixtine Passot, Yann Guédon, Soazig Guyomarc'h [Montpellier University, DIADE] , Laurent Laplaze [IRD, DIADE] .

Funding: Labex Agro (Contractor for Virtual Plants: CIRAD, from 2014 to 2017)

Pearl millet is an orphan crop regarding research effort despite its key role for food safety in Sub-Saharan Africa. The objective of the New Pearl project is to develop basic biological knowledges concerning Pearl millet development and genetic diversity. We are more specifically involved in the study of the root system development and the genetic diversity on the basis of root phenotypic traits.

Integrated model of plant organ growth

Participants : Yann Guédon, Christine Granier [INRA, LEPSE] , Garance Koch [INRA, LEPSE] , Nadia Bertin [INRA, PSH] , Valentina Baldazzi [INRA, PSH] .

Funding: Labex Agro (Contractor for Virtual Plants: CIRAD. From 2015 to 2018)

The objective of this project is to develop a generic model which will predict interactions among the main processes controlling the development of source and sink organs in tomato, i.e. cell division, cell expansion and endoreduplication in relation to carbon and water fluxes under fluctuating environment. To achieve this objective we will i) capitalize on expertise, multi-scale phenotyping tools and genetic resources already compiled on the fruit model tomato and the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana; ii) perform new experiments to collect phenotyping data currently missing in this field, especially concerning the early phase of fruit and leaf development in tomato and the interactions between genes and environment; iii) develop a process-based model of organ growth which will integrate knowledge collected at the different scales.

Partners: PSH, INRA, Avignon; LEPSE, INRA, Montpellier, Biologie du fruit et Pathologie INRA, Bordeaux;