Project Manager: Mathilde Massot mathilde.massot@valinov.fr

Company Relations Manager: Ellen Bouty ellen.bouty@valinov.fr

The Plant and Seed Health platform can help you accelerate innovation and design new integrated growing systems that tie in with the development of environmentally respectful agriculture.
The team of engineers and technicians offers its services to meet your strategic development requirements in the field of seed and plant protection and nutrition.

Our Services

Comprehensive phytodiagnosis via a network of partner experts and available to growers, technicians and advisors in the industry to help them improve their management of plant health problems;

• Identify the origin of suspect symptoms caused by phytopathogenic fungi, bacteria, viruses, insects and nematodes.

Understanding and coping with an emerging or strategic plant health problem:

• Develop new methods for identifying, detecting and quantifying phytopathogenic organisms and forecasting the risks associated with their presence;
• Become aware of the conditions in which a disease appears and is disseminated through the use of bibliographical studies, surveys and experiments;
• Learn about biodiversity and the evolution of pathogen populations (building up collections of isolates, monitoring...).

Support in developing new strategies for the protection and fertilisation of crops:

• Assess the potential effectiveness of low-risk substances and products (natural products, bio-control agents, elicitors, physio-activators, fertilisers ...);
• Characterise and understand how they work;
• Identify the natural active substances in your products of natural origin and of interest;
• Determine the conditions for maximum effectiveness (dose, position, bio-availability, sensitivity to agro-environmental and eco-physiological conditions)...;
• Propose sustainable farmingpratices integrated products (eg. Treatment program modalities) for carrying out your future field experiment (practical values or demonstrative tests);
• Guide companies through the approval and standardization processes of their products.

Carrying out bibliographical summaries.

Our Expertise and Resources

Etiology & health control:

• symptomatology
• isolation techniques on different substrates
• morphological recognition
• serology and plant indexing
• molecular analysis

Plant pathology:

• inoculum production
• inoculation techniques
• reproduction of symptoms in plants
• phenotyping and scoring scales

Biology and epidemiology:

• population analysis
• modelling and risk forecast tools

Crop protection strategies:

• genetic resistance
• bio-control agents and products
• induced resistance (SDN)
• prophylaxis
• pesticides

Biotic (bio aggressors) and abiotic (water and nutrient deficiency, etc.) stress factors

Seed and plant defence metabolisms:

• (histology, cytology, phytochemistry, gene expression/repression, etc.)

Seed technologies.

Our Facilities

Valinov Equipment:

• Mobile climate unit, optical appliances, centrifuge, freezers, RNA/DNA extractor, ...

Equipment available in our Research partner laboratories:

• Phytotrons with fog system, stereoscopic microscopes, fluorescence microscopes, stirring and inoculation tables, refrigerated drier, orbital stirrer, crushers, Microbiological Safety Stations (MSS), spectrophotometer, ELISA plate reader and washer ...
• Access to IFR Quasav's shared dedicated resources for nucleic acid analysis (ANAN) genotyping and medium-speed transcriptomic analysis (Capillary sequencer, Licor...)
• Access to IFR Quasav's shared dedicated resources for cell imaging (IMAC) equipped with a microtome, vibratome, electron and transmission microscopes, digital camera...;
• Access to high-speed sequencing/genotyping and high-speed Transcriptome facilities at Ouest Genopôle;
• Access to experimental facilities (S1 greenhouse, tunnels, container area, field plots) at Agrocampus Ouest - INHP Angers Centre.

Our scientific partners:

GEVES/SNES

• Plant Pathology team: health control, plant resistance

UMR PAVE Plant Pathology

• Ecology, diversity and taxonomy of phytopathogenic bacteria (epidemiology, CFBP)
• Molecular interactions between bioaggressors and maloideae (elicitors - fire blight)
• Necrotrophic fungal complexes (Alternaria...)
• Evolving ecology of fungal pathosystems (Modelling, Apple scab...)

UMR Sagah (Agricultural Sciences Applied to ornamental Horticulture)

• Study of the effects of environmental factors (ornamental ligneous plant model)

EPHOR team Agrocampus Ouest - INH (Agro-Campus Ouest- INH)

• Controlling water and mineral transfers in the "subsoil-plant-atmosphere" system

MRU PMS Seed Molecular Physiology

• Seed technologies

RCIM , Neurophysiology Laboratory, Receptors and Ion Membrane Channels (Univ. Angers)

• Effectiveness of natural insecticides and how they work (in vivo and in vitro studies using electrophysiology on neurone preparations)