TENTATIVE PROGRAMME

The programme aims to cover topics related to innovation and research on biosolutions and the sessions will be defined more precisely on the basis of your contributions that can include :

Mechanisms of action of biostimulants and biocontrol products
Factors influencing the effectiveness of biosolutions
Study and evaluation methodologies, including modeling
Broader perspectives and real-world applications of plant biostimulation
Research and advances on natural compounds used in biocontrol product development
Plant responses to elicitors and biostimulants
Effects of combining biostimulants and biocontrol products
Study of the effects and behavior of microbial consortia
Environmental impact of biosolutions
Other advances in research and innovation on biosolutions

The programme for Tuesday and Wednesday co-contructed with BESTIM will include a roundtable (Plant immunity : research directions to bring products to the field).

GUESTS

Victor Carrion Bravo

Victor Carrion Bravo is the head of Carrionlab. In the microSOS project, he is the coordinator and leads the team of IHSM (UMA-CSIC) together with Noé Fernández Pozo. His research interest is to understand the underlying mechanisms of plant protection against (a)biotic stresses mediated by microorganisms.

“We specialize in the development of new multidisciplinary approaches to systematically correlate microbial genes and biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) to their functions in plants under stress”.

Luciana A. Pagnussat

Luciana A. Pagnussat is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences at Mar del Plata University and a researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) in Argentina. She heads a multidisciplinary team dedicated to the study of synthetic consortia of indigenous microalgae and plant growth-promoting bacteria, with a focus on organic agriculture for crops that include wheat, corn, tomato, and lettuce. Her main goal is to elucidate the hints of microalgae/bacteria inocula performance from an agronomic, physiological, and biochemical point of view.

Eric Liégeois

Eric Liégeois was graduated Chemical Engineer for Agricultural Industries, from the University of Gembloux (Belgium) in 1990.

After first experiences as researcher, civil servant and manager in various positions in the Belgian Federal Administration, he joined the European Commission in 2002 working successively at DG ENV, DG GROW and since April 2018 at DG SANTE. In charge of the authorisation of plant protection products, in particular the biopesticides, low-risk products and risk reduction activities he is leading the team in charge of biopesticides, basic substances and risk mitigation measures and precision application techniques.

Monica Höfte

Monica Höfte is a general plant pathologist studying fundamental and practical aspects of plant-pathogen interactions. She works on biological and integrated control of plant pathogenic fungi and bacteria in a wide variety of tropical and temperate crops. Mainly soilborne pathogens such as Pythium, Phytophthora, Fusarium, Verticillium and Rhizoctonia are studied. In biocontrol, the focus is on cyclic lipopeptides produced by Pseudomonas and Bacillus strains.

Michele Perazzolli

Michele Perazzolli is associate professor in plant physiology at the University of Trento (Italy). His research is focused on characterizing plant-microbe interactions responsible for plant growth promotion, induction of plant resistance against pathogens, and mitigation of abiotic stresses derived from climate change. He is studying the role of volatile and non-volatile metabolites in plant-microbe and plant-plant communications and plant responses elicited by the colonization of beneficial microbes to clarify mechanisms responsible for abiotic and biotic stress tolerance.

Loïc Rajjou

Loïc Rajjou is a Professor in Predictive Plant Physiology at AgroParisTech, performing his research activities at IJPB (INRAE-AgroParisTech, Université Paris-Saclay) in Versailles. His work focuses on seed biology, plant resilience, and sustainable agriculture, integrating biocontrol and biostimulation strategies to enhance germination and seedling establishment. He co-founded the startup SEED IN TECH and actively contributes to public-private initiatives. His research combines multi-omics approaches to drive innovation in seed technology and agronomic applications, bridging the gap from the lab to the field.

Tilmann Weber

Tilmann Weber is Professor for Natural Products Genome Mining and Associate Scientific Director at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability of the Technical University of Denmark. Here he leads the interdisciplinary research group “Natural Products Genome Mining”. His main research interest is focused on deciphering the molecular pathways and engineering the biosynthesis of natural products by combining genetic, biochemical and bioinformatics methods. He is a pioneer in developing software for the automated genome mining (e.g., antiSMASH, antiSMASH-DB, BGCFLow) and analysis and engineering of secondary metabolite biosynthetic pathways encoding the biosynthesis of antibiotics or compounds for sustainable agriculture. To enable modern metabolic engineering strategies in under-studied secondary/specialized metabolite producing microorganisms, he is furthermore deeply involved in developing CRISPR-based metabolic engineering tools for bacteria.