Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology

Research topics

Holoherbarium project is inspired by the observation that plants collected in historical herbaria contain in their roots, in the form of DNA or proteins, traces of the root microbiota composed of the many microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, etc.) that interacted with the living plant. Thus, the study of plants collected before and during the exponential acceleration of global changes (including agricultural intensification), using molecular methods, is likely to shed light on the impact of environmental changes on plant microbiota during the last 200 years. We therefore expect that the acquisition of information on past plant microbial communities could help restore degraded agricultural soil and improve the agronomic characteristics of cultivated plants in an agroecological context.