The "PLant science in the ANThropocene" (PLANT) workshop will run from March 24 to April 4, 2025 at the Institut Pascal of the University Paris-Saclay (campus about 25 km south of Paris).
This 2-week workshop will address key challenges for the international Plant Science community, from basic sciences to socio-economic and environmental aspects including climate change. It will gather about 100 international scientists. The attendance will mix high stature senior scientists, together with numerous younger ones.
The program will focus on three themes:
- Theme I: "Frontiers in Plant Science fundamental research" (March 24-25-26)
- Theme II: “Feeding the planet: roles for Plant Science and associated environmental and socio-economic challenges" (March 27-28-31 and April 1)
- Theme III: "Plants as factories: from chemical compounds to mitigating climate change” (April 2-3-4)
Each of these themes will also cover cross-cutting issues: training, innovation and outreach activities.
Mornings will consist mainly of presentations by about 40 senior scientists, who will provide their vision of how to rise to those challenges, while the afternoon sessions will be devoted principally to brainstorming across generations on selected topics. This workshop will thus require input from all participants, the goals being the emergence of consensus community opinions and the specification of paths to success for several major challenges, be they at the level of training the next generation, guiding deciders of public policies, or connecting with the wider public on the importance of plant sciences in the Anthropocene. All these challenges are of high complexity and depend on several disciplines. Thus, beyond plant biologists and geneticists, some participants will come from agronomy, ecology, social and environmental sciences, economics, and also from chemical, physical and computational sciences.
Syntheses in the form of opinion papers will be drafted for publication.
This program is chaired by Olivier Martin and Loïc Lepiniec.
Project managers : Francesca Sconfienza (Institut Pascal) and Marie-Jeanne Sellier (SPS)
The Institut Pascal is an international scientific hub. Its purpose is to provide a meeting place to facilitate the exchange of ideas and foster international collaborations, across all of the scientific themes covered by the Université Paris-Saclay. One of the institute's main objectives is to conduct thematic programs with high-level scientists and young researchers from all over the world. The programs also aim to enable young scientists to address and deepen their understanding of the latest developments in their research field and related topics.
Provisional program
Theme I: "Frontiers in Plant Science fundamental research"
Chaired by Anja Krieger-Liszkay, Leandro Quadrana and Xenie Johnson
Monday March 24
- Loïc Lepiniec (IJPB, SPS - Université Paris-Saclay - INRAE - AgroParisTech, France) – “Plant Sciences in the Anthropocene”
- Christophe Maurel (IPSiM, France) – “Plants and water: climate change puts the pressure on”
- Dolf Weijers (Wageningen University, The Netherlands) – “A protein-centered view towards fundamental plant biology”
- To be announced
Tuesday March 25
- Kalina Haas (IJPB INRAE, France) – "Advanced Bioimaging of Plant Cell Expansion Dynamics: Capturing Extremely Small and Rapid Processes"
- Bruno Moulia (PIAF INRAE, France) – “Mobilizing Interdisciplinarity for Plant Sciences: Lessons and Pathways”
- Marek Mutwill (NTU Singapore) – Title to come
- Sheng Luan (UC Berkeley, USA) - "Decoding calcium signals contributes to sustainable agriculture"
Wednesday March 26
- Veronica Grieneisen (Cardiff University, UK) – "The multi-scale nature of transport in plants: from auxin to nutrients, and translating knowledge from Arabidopsis to other species"
- Nicholas Provart (University of Toronto, Canada) – "Raising the BAR for Plant Translational Biology: Guard Cell Drought Transcriptomes Use Case"
- Andreas Weber (CEPLAS, Heinrich Heine University, Germany) – “Overcoming limitations of photosynthesis through synthetic biology”
- Detlef Weigel (MPI Tubingen, Germany) – "Imperfect plants in an imperfect world"
Theme II: “Feeding the planet: roles for Plant Science and associated environmental and socio-economic challenges"
Chaired by Michael Hodges, Jean Colcombet and Mathilde Fagard
Thursday March 27
- Claire Chenu (INRAE, France) – "Plants' contribution to Carbon sequestration in soils and soil health"
- Philippe Ciais (LSCE, France) – "Impact of climate extremes on cultivated plants"
- Pamela Ronald (UC Davis, USA) – “Engineering crops for resilience to a changing climate”
- Ben Scheres (Wageningen University Research, The Netherlands) – “The potential and pitfalls of Data Driven Breeding for sustainable agriculture”
Friday March 28
- Faouzi Bekkaoui (INRA Maroc) – “Contribution of agricultural research for better resilience of Moroccan agriculture”
- Heribert Hirt (KAUST, Saudi Arabia) – “Harnessing the power of deserts for fortifying plants to climate change”
- Monica Höfte (Ghent University, Belgium) – "The importance of plant health for one health"
- Pere Puigdomènech (CRAG, Spain) – “Role of scientists in debates on sustainable food production”
Monday March 31
- Catherine Feuillet (INARI Agriculture, USA) – "Solving Our Food System Challenges Through Integrated Innovation"
- Christian Huyghe (INRAE, France) – “Feeding the planet while getting back into the planetary boundaries: challenges and possible trajectories”
- Paul Leadley (ESE, France) – Title to come
- Global economy / To be announced
Tuesday April 1
- David Baulcombe (University of Cambridge, UK) – "Durable Disease Resistance in Crops"
- Carole Caranta (INRAE, France) – "INRAE's vision and strategy for Agriculture, Food and Environmental Research"
- Olivier Hamant (INRAE and ENS Lyon, France) – “Sustainability: Robustness before efficiency”
- Sophie Nicklaus (INRAE, France) – “Driving consumers to eat more plant-based foods: nutritional, taste and organizational challenges”
- Marc-André Selosse (MNHN, France) – “Microbiota supporting plants and health: how to support them”
Theme III: "Plants as factories: from chemical compounds to mitigating climate change”
Chaired by Herman Höfte and Stéphanie Baumberger
Wednesday April 2
- Stéphanie Baumberger (IJPB, France) – “Role of plant sciences in the development of a global sustainable bioeconomy”
- Caroline Gutjahr (MPI Potsdam, Germany) – “Harnessing arbuscular mycorrhiza to enhance plant resilience”
- Wolfgang Busch (Salk Institute for Biological Studies, USA) – “Harnessing Plants for Direct Carbon Removal: Generating Long-Lived Soil Carbon”
- Gabriel Krouk (IPSiM, France) - "Examples of machine learning to advance (plant) biology"
- Global economy / To be announced
Thursday April 3
- Wout Boerjan (VIB / Gent University, Belgium) – “Metabolomics to discover metabolic pathways for crop improvement”
- Marie-Cécile Damave (Agridées, France - "A land-based bioeconomy, enabling farming resilience"
- Herman Höfte (IJPB, France) – “Perspectives in plant cell wall research”
- Anne Osbourn (John Innes Centre, UK) – “A million shades of green: Understanding and harnessing plant metabolic diversity for food and health applications”
Friday April 4
- Kazuki Saito (RIKEN, Japan) – “The challenge of phytochemical genomics in the Anthropocene”
- Frédéric Bourgaud (ENSAIA, France) – "Natural molecules from plants – a source of inspiration for human health and plan protection in a One Health approach"
- Olivier Martin (IPS2, France) – “Conclusion and Prospects”
Transversal topics
Teaching and training
Chaired by Marianne Delarue, Alia Dellagi, Benoît Alunni, Mathieu Jossier and Helke Hillebrand
Innovation
Chaired by Sylvie Dinant and Loïc Rajjou
Outreach
Chaired by Pierre Hilson and Marie-Jeanne Sellier
