page-1 - Unité Génétique et Amélioration des Fruits et Légumes _ INRAE

Equipes de Recherche

Resistance to pests and pathogens, Diversity and Durability

There is a primordial need to fight pests and pathogens to reduce the use of pesticide by genetic resistance and by improving its durability. We work on models of strong agricultural –and Mediterranean- concerns, crops: tomato, pepper, melon, peach, and arabidopsis as a model. We tackle resistance to a diverse set of pests and pathogens: viruses, oomycetes, aphids and study different resistance mechanisms to biotrophs (effector-triggered resistances, loss-of-susceptibility to pathogens, polygenic resistances). Our objectives are : - Characterize the genetic and functional bases of resistance - Unravel the diversity of plant genetic resistance factors - Provide new alleles and new genetic combinations of loci to enlarge the resistance spectrum, level and durability - Predict the capability of pests and pathogens to adapt to plants by exploring their interactions

Diversity, Adaptation, Determinants and Integration

Tomato is a major crop both as the first vegetable grown over the world and as a model species for fruit development. Apricot and peach are major Mediterranean kernel fruit productions. The challenge for the fruit industry is to speed up the transition to resilient fruit production systems with low inputs, adapted to variable environments. Reducing phytosanitary inputs and maintaining production regularity and quality under conditions of climate change are the main challenges for the production of stone fruit, in the future. Same objectives apply for tomato for which there is a social demand for fruit quality at the sensory and nutritional levels. The originality of the work of DADI lies in the multi-character Integration of traits linked to fruit quality, resistance to pests and regularity of production. Our aims are : - studying diversity of genetics resources at the whole genome level; - identifying new genes, QTL and genitors of interest (including sources of resistance for the Prunus); - understanding the function of genes under stress conditions (biotic and abiotic); - developing multi-trait selection design for low input production systems.