Context and Issues

Our research focuses on the creation of original plant material (parents and varieties) of winter bread wheat for an agriculture with less compsumtion in chemical inputs and thus more autonomous.

Plant improvement is led together with the development  of crop management and of cropping systems adapted to new genotypes in integrated production and in organic agriculture. References obtained since 2000 through networked experiments within the national program “crop management for hardy varieties of bread wheat” are valued to propose new couples varieties/crop managements to the farmers and to supply scenarios for the evolution of French agriculture towards less dependence on pesticides (collective scientific expertise on pesticides in December 2005, Ecophyto 2018 program then study Ecophyto R*D in January, 2010).

The originality of the INRA's  works lies  in our exclusive choice, in Rennes since 2003, of the comparison of the performances in "very low inputs management" for the first 3 years of yield evaluation, from F6 to F8.

This choice is contrary to that of other breeders who, to evaluate productivity, focus on search of maximal efficiency without other restricting factors than climate and who sort out on mode "intensive treated”. Every year, more than 3 000 microplots are followed by MVI team with the support of the experimental unit of the INRA centre of Rennes-Le Rheu.

Objectives

• To create innovative varieties and a methodology of breeding of bread wheat, to improve resilience of production systems  thrifty in chemical inputs, including organic agriculture ;
• To develop more effective breeding's schemes to achieve this goal ;
• To take part in conception and in validation of crop's management for systems of culture thrifty in chemical inputs.

Expertise and Skills

• Plant breeding, agronomy, plant pathology, integrated farming, sustainable agriculture, organic agriculture and agroecology are fields of expertise of the team.
• Field experiment for plant breeding, networking is the heart of our business.