Paris, France
19 April 2017

The International Alliance for Phytobiomes Research (Phytobiomes Alliance) is pleased to announce that the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) has joined the organization as a sponsoring partner.

The Phytobiomes Alliance – an international, nonprofit consortium of academic institututions, large and small companies, and governmental agencies – was established in 2016 to coordinate publicprivate research projects on various aspects of agriculturally relevant phytobiomes. Phytobiome is a term that relates to a plant in a distinct geographical unit, which includes the plant itself, all micro- and macro-organisms living in, on, or around the plant (e.g., microbes, animals, other plants), and the environment (i.e., soil, air, water, and climate).

The Phytobiomes Alliance is focused on building a foundation for a systems-level understanding of how phytobiome components on any farm, rangeland, or forest interact and affect each other. By adding data about biological components to physical data already used in precision agriculture and integrated pest management, the Phytobiomes Alliance goal is to enable a paradigm shift in agricultural production by empowering management of the whole phytobiome system instead of a few individual physical components.

Representatives of Phytobiomes Alliance sponsors serve on the Coordinating Committee; the role of this Committee is to identify research, resource, or technology gaps, establish priorities, develop strategic plans, and design roadmaps to achieve Alliance goals.

“INRA has been at the forefront of advancing agroecology and of enhancing our knowledge of hostmicrobe interactions ” explains Kellye Eversole, the Phytobiomes Alliance Executive Director, “and we are thrilled to have them come on board to help us establish priorities for pre-competitive research at the international level.”

“The Phytobiomes Alliance offers the opportunity to join and contribute to international dynamics around plant-microbiota interactions in relation to plant performance that will stimulate public-private innovative projects in this competitive field of research,” says Christophe Mougel, Research Director at INRA.

“In this frame, INRA is contributing to the emergence of the International Phytobiomes Alliance, a place of debate, exchange and advancement of knowledge to analyze, predict and control the performance of plants in their ecosystems with the final aim of building efficient and environmentally friendly agricultural practices” says Emmanuelle Maguin, Director of MEM Metaprogramme at INRA. Over the next decades, agricultural research and food, feed, and fiber production must make a paradigm shift to be able to meet in a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner the future demands of a projected world population of 9.6 billion by 2050. The Phytobiomes Alliance aims at empowering solutions that ensure we can meet this challenge.

The Phytobiomes Alliance envisions that all farmers, ranchers, growers, and foresters will have at their disposal predictive and prescriptive tools to choose the best combination of crop, management practices, and inputs for a specific field in a given year, taking into consideration all physical and biological conditions.

About the Phytobiomes Alliance
The Phytobiomes Alliance is an international, nonprofit alliance of industry, academic, and governmental partners created in 2016. The goal of the Phytobiomes Alliance is to understand, predict, and control emergent phenotypes for sustainable production of food, feed, and fiber on any given farm. The Phytobiomes Alliance is sponsored by Bayer CropScience, The Climate Corporation, Monsanto, INRA, Eversole Associates, BioConsortia, Indigo, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, NewLeaf Symbiotics, The American Phytopathological Society (APS), and the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation. 

Website: http://www.phytobiomesalliance.org

Published: April 19, 2017