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A 34th Carrefour de la sélection du tournesol under the sign of collaboration

08 Mar 2023

The 34th Carrefour de la sélection du tournesol took place on February 9 and 10, 2023 at St-Pierre-d'Amilly (Charente Maritime) on the GEVES site. Organized for the first time by SELEOPRO, it gathered this year more than 70 participants from the public research sector (INRAE), GEVES, the industry and private sunflower breeders.

During this meeting, the actors of the public research, the oil-protein industry and the breeders were able to share the progress of the projects financed by Promosol and SELEOPRO, and in particular to exchange on the work carried out on sunflower which can be of interest for breeding. This year, the meeting was led by Emmanuelle Mestries, Crop Protection Officer at Terres Inovia and leader of the SELEOPRO sunflower commission.

Discussions on plant and sunflower improvement

This year, many topics were discussed, reflecting the diversity of projects underway: genetic progress, variability of sunflowers for the attractiveness of bees under water stress conditions, development and maintenance of genetic resources, the interaction of sunflower and broomrape cumana, the germinative quality of sunflower, the protein content and the ability to hull sunflower seeds
It was also an opportunity to discover the activities and facilities of GEVES, in particular the BioGEVES laboratory and an impressive collection of seeds kept in cold storage. The INRAE of Nantes (Biopolymers Interactions Assemblies Unit) also presented its work on biorefinery, i.e. the valorisation of compounds from the seed.

​​​​​​​The 34th Carrefour de sélection du tournesol was an opportunity to visit the GEVES facilities, in particular its seed collections kept in cold storage.

 

Finally, various workshops were held to reflect together on the construction of future projects on mildew, multiservice intermediate crops and to review the evaluation of sunflower varieties for organic agriculture.


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Focus on Protour

During these two rich and dense days, Vincent Jauvion and Patrick Carré presented the issues, objectives and partial results of the Protour project.

Financed by Sofiprotéol via the Fonds d'Actions Stratégiques pour les Oléagineux et protéagineux (FASO) and coordinated by RAGT, it aims to "develop selection tools and study the genetic variability of sunflower for protein content and shelling ability".
Three questions to Patrick Carré, strategic expert and process engineer at Terres Inovia


What is the focus of the project you are working on at the Pessac site?

The aim is to orientate selection towards varieties that are more interesting from a protein point of view by allowing greater ease of shelling and, therefore, a better protein content in the cakes.

What is the sticking point in shelling ?

We need to understand why the most oil-rich sunflowers are only two-thirds dehulled. In order to have a high protein content in the cakes (potentially up to 50%), it would be necessary to succeed in hulling them up to 90 or even 100%. The improvement in oil content goes hand in hand with a reduction in husking ability. This is explained by the selection of cultivars with finer shells. What is innovative in this project is a new approach centered on the phenomena of adhesion which are not taken into account by the researchers who have worked until now on the shelling of sunflower.

What does the work of Terres Inovia consist of?

As far as I am concerned (the laboratory team has worked on rapid analysis methods), the objective is to demonstrate the relevance of this new approach in order to offer breeders a way of addressing the question of hulling aptitude on criteria that are more convenient for them, such as the number of days of growth of the achene after flowering.