Saclay Plant' Innov' 2016

For the third consecutive year, the Saclay Plant Sciences LabEx organized the Saclay Plant’ Innov' event at the INRA site of Versailles. The event took place on October 18^th, and was focused on “Varietal improvement and green biotechnologies”. This day of discussions and meetings brought together a hundred participants, SPS members and potential private collaborators, around the topic of partnership.

This year, the Cytopheno ANR project had the place of honor. This project, which just ended, aimed at studying the nucleo-cytoplasmic co-adaptation and linked adaptive phenotypes of plants. During the morning, the effect of "nucleus x cytoplasm" interactions on plant responses to their environment was the subject of several presentations by the partners involved. Then, in the afternoon, a round table addressed the potential applications of the Cytopheno outputs in the case of crops.

During the morning several strengths of SPS LabEx laboratories were also highlighted. For example, translational biology, use of mathematical tools and modeling or synthetic biology were presented with concrete examples of research projects conducted in the SPS field.

In the afternoon, the private sector representatives attending the event were able to discuss with small groups of SPS researchers, by slots of 20 minutes, on the following themes: 1) plant genome modifications, 2) plant system and synthetic biology, 3) biotic stresses and biocontrol and 4) abiotic stresses and fertilization.

Finally, they were also invited to discover our infrastructures in the form of a tour of several technological platforms of the Versailles site.

These potential partners have left with many contacts and interesting ideas that are only waiting to be developed in the coming months.