1st March 2020

Roula Shamsi, a Syrian teacher-researcher, fled her war-torn country in order to be able to practice her profession in safety and fulfil her passion for research. Since February, the young plant pathologist, who specialises in fungal diseases of wheat, has benefited from the PAUSE Programme, which offers emergency asylum to scientists in exile.

See here a complete presentation of Roula and her project .

2nd May 2019

Imen Jendoubi joins us as visiting PhD candidate for a 3-month period. She is supervised in Tunisia by Dr. Bochra Bahri. She will perform thermal phenotyping tests with Tunisian Puccinia striiformis strains and assess their adaptation to temperature. She will work under the direct supervision of Marc Leconte.

1st April 2019

Gwilherm Gazeau joins us as engineer for a 28-month period. He will participate in the phenotyping and monitoring of French populations of Zymoseptoria tritici, in particular through the development of new molecular tools and protocols for the characterization of fungal populations. This work will be coordinated between the FSOV DivR project and a collaborative project with the BASF compagny under the supervision of Reda Amezrou, Thierry Marcel, and Anne-Sophie Walker (AMAR team).

25th March 2019

Reda Amezrou joins us as post-doc researcher for a 3-year period. He will conduct researches within a collaborative project with the BASF compagny aiming at the identification of genetic determinants involved in the pathogenicity and fungicide resistance of Zymoseptoria tritici. The approach followed will consist at acquiring whole genome resequencing data to identify polymorphisms, and precise quantitative phenotypes to perform GWAS. The results obtained should help implementing responsible and relevant disease control measures and more generally, improving the sustainability of fungicide modes of action and of resistant wheat cultivars. Reda will work under the supervision of Thierry Marcel and Anne-Sophie Walker (AMAR team).

11th March 2019

Jad B Novi joins us as visiting PhD candidate for a 3-month period. He is supervised in Italy by Pr. Marco Maccaferri and will work in BIOGER on phenotyping of Zymoseptoria tritici-wheat interactions under the supervision of Thierry Marcel.

14st January 2019

Camilla Langlands-Perry joins us as PhD candidate working on specificity and sustainability of wheat quantitative resistance to septoria leaf blotch, under the supervision of Thierry Marcel.

2nd January 2019

Tiphaine Vidal joins us as permanent scientist (chargée de recherche). Her challenge is to connect the issues "multi-year recurrence of epidemics" & "deployment of wheat resistance", focusing on rusts and leaf blotch.

15th November 2018

Kevin Meyer joins us as engineer. He will work for the H2020 RustWatch project under the supervision of Henriette Goyeau. He will be in charge of monitoring rust populations, postulation of resistance genes, phenotyping, genotyping, data analysis.

5th November 2018

Cécilia Fontyn joins us as PhD candidate working on the aggressiveness of Puccinia triticina as significant component of the pathogen population to the cultivated landscape, under the supervision of Henriette Goyeau, Thierry Marcel and Ivan Sache.

8 Octobre 2018

Les équipes Épidemiologie et EPLM interviennent dans une tâche du projet EMPHASIS qui vise à comprendre le développement de certaines maladies de grandes cultures et à mettre au point une stratégie générique pour identifier des agents de biocontrôle potentiels. Cette stratégie s’appuie sur une meilleure connaissance de la communauté microbienne naturellement présente sur les résidus de cultures, support d'agent phytopathogènes. Nous estimons qu'elle permettrait d’identifier certaines espèces bénéfiques, seules ou associées, qui pourraient ensuite être utilisées pour limiter le développement de maladies...

1st October 2018

Carolina Orellana-Torrejon joins us, again (after her successful MSc training period!) as PhD candidate working on "The impact of varietal mixtures on local dynamics of resistance breakdown: case of inter-epidemic transmission of a virulence recently appeared in Zymoseptoria tritici populations", under the supervision of Frédéric Suffert and Sébastien Saint-Jean (ECOSYS).

 2nd July 2018

Benjamin Boudier joins us as engineer. He will work for the H2020 Emphasis project under the supervision of Valérie Laval and Frédéric Suffert. He will characterize a collection of fungi isolated from wheat and oilseed rape residues by Lydie Kerdraon during her PhD project, will develop interaction tests with Leptosphaeria maculans on oilseed rape at cotyledon stage, and will quantify the intensity of sexual reproduction of Zymoseptoria tritici.

14th June 2018

Many colleagues from BIOGER (and elsewhere) were gathered at Claude Pope's retirement party. Photos and annectodes summarized a professional life dedicated to the epidemiology of yellow rust and other wheat diseases. Claude, we all wish you a long and happy retirement!

12th February 2018

Julie Noah, Engineer candidate at the engineering school UniLaSalle, campus of Rouen, joins us for a 5-month project on the development of a quantitive pathogenicity test on wheat leaf rust (Puccinia triticina), under the supervision of Henriette Goyeau and Thierry Marcel.

5th February 2018

Julien Colombet joins us as engineer assistant. He will work for the FSOV project "Search for durable resistance to yellow rust in durum wheat and triticale", combining phetotyping and genotyping of French Puccinia striiformis strains, under the supervision of Claude Pope and Marc Leconte.

29th January 2018

Permanent research position CR2 in plant disease epidemiology on "Epidemic recurrence and management of varietal resistance"

Key activities and required skills - The goal of the host research team is to improve the efficacy and durability of varietal resistance against fungal diseases of wheat. The successful candidate will lead projects aiming to characterize the epidemiological processes involved in the multi-annual recurrence of epidemics and pathogen population dynamics. He/she will integrate these processes and their influencing factors to design and evaluate varietal resistance management strategies. He/she will base his/her research on multi-scale experimental strategies (plant, field, landscape) in close collaboration with other team members working on host-pathogen interactions, evolution of pathogen populations and processes involved in the inter-annual transmission of virulence, and will collaborate with modellers. Skills in phytopathology and epidemiology, ecology or dynamics of microbial populations in an agronomical context are highly recommended.

Training required - PhD or equivalent, preferably in plant epidemiology, phytopathology, biology of fungal populations. Skills in demogenetics, evolution/ecology of microbial populations, and agroecology would be a bonus. Candidates should have a good command of English, and long-term international experience would also be desirable. Successful candidates who have not yet acquired this experience abroad will be required to do so after their probationary period (1st year).

More details & contact

Deadline for submitting applications:
- 5th March 2018, at 5pm (Paris time), for online applications
- 28 February 2018, at midnight (as attested by the postmark), for paper applications

8th January 2018

David Milliot-Stoclin joins us for a MSc 6-month project on the durability of the durum wheat resistance to Puccinia triticina and Zymoseptoria tritici, under the supervision of Henriette Goyeau and Thierry Marcel.

Agathe Ballu joins us as PhD candidate working on the assessement of anti-fungicide-resistance strategies using an experimental evolution approach (case study Zymoseptoria tritici), under the supervision of Anne-Sophie Walker, Anne Dérédec and Florence Carpentier.

1st August 2017

Maroua Ouaja joins us on a 3-month training period within the context of a Franco-Tunisian exchange, under the supervision of Thierry Marcel. She is preparing her PhD in Tunisia on the association genetic resistance to septoria leaf blotch in a panel of durum wheat lines derived from Tunisian traditional varieties.

4th July 2017

Safa Ben Krima joins us on a 3-year PhD fellowship partly financed by the INRA SPE division. She will work on the adaptation of Zymoseptoria tritici to genetically heterogeneous durum wheat populations from Tunisia, under the supervision of Thierry Marcel.

7th July 2017

Congratulations to Anne-Lise Boixel, who recently passed the recruitment exam of “research engineer” position open in our group. After 2018 she will have in charge a scientific survey program on wheat rust epidemic dynamics at the landscape scale. Before that, as PhD candidate she will continue her thesis project on the diversity of responses and adaptive potential to changes in thermal conditions in Zymoseptoria tritici populations, under the supervision of Frédéric Suffert and Michaël Chelle (EcoSys).