Institut National de Recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement
The French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment (INRAE) is a public research establishment. It is a community of 12,000 people with more than 200 research units and 42 experimental units located throughout France. The institute is among the world leaders in agricultural and food sciences, in plant and animal sciences, and is 11th in the world in ecology and environment. INRAE’s main goal is to be a key player in the transitions necessary to address major global challenges. In the face of the increase in population, climate change, scarcity of resources and decline in biodiversity, the institute develops solutions for multiperformance agriculture, high quality food and sustainable management of resources and ecosystems.
Among research conducted within the UMR1332/INRAE, the strawberry group is focused on genomics and genetic studies of strawberry. This group has a 20-year-long experience in establishing genetic maps in strawberry -and a 10-year programme of marker assisted selection in collaboration with private companies, such as Invenio.
One part of our research concerns the molecular control of the balance between sexual and asexual flowering and fruit quality based on genetics, functional genomics and plant architecture.
Main task in the project
The main contribution of INRAE will be in work packages 2 and 3. In work package 2, INRAE coordinates the task concerned with targeted call on Marker Assisted Selection (MAS). INRAE participates in the development and the use of an array for MAS. The strong link INRAE has developed with private companies to set up MAS makes INRAE's choice for this activity relevant. By hiring post docs, INRAE develops allelic diversity analyses, GWAS approaches and genomic selection analyses, with strong collaboration with the partner INVENIO. In collaboration with CIRAD, INRAE has initiated an architecture phenotyping tool that will be developed in this project. In addition, INRAE has a longstanding experience in protocols for phenotyping developmental traits such as flowering, running, and vigour, which are in interaction with the environment. INRAE will also be involved in dissemination activities.
