ImmuSoy

Scientific challenges

• Reducing pesticide use by exploiting plants' natural resistance to pathogens.
• An innovation in plant biology, with an innovative strategy based on the analysis of the genomic diversity of PRR genes to improve the basic immunity of soybean against sclerotinia.
• Better knowledge by identifying and characterizing specific PRR alleles that confer enhanced resistance to the pathogen, thus contributing to the understanding of resistance mechanisms in plants.

Socio-economic challenges

• Securing agricultural yields: by developing more resistant soybean varieties.
• Support for sustainable agriculture: the results of the project can be used in both conventional and organic farming, providing a sustainable solution for crop protection.
• A response to the growing demand for soybeans by providing more resistant and adapted soybean varieties.

The project aims to develop an innovative method for rapidly and quantitatively assessing the resistance of soybean varieties to sclerotinia, and to explore the diversity of PRRs in soybean to identify the alleles responsible for this resistance. The expected results will make it possible to improve the resistance of elite soybean lines to sclerotinia.

• High-throughput phenotyping methodology: improvement of the field measurement protocol and development and validation of an innovative, quantitative disease phenotyping method using the Navautron system.
• Identification of PRR alleles conferring increased resistance to Sclerotinia sclerotiorum: these alleles could be used in breeding programs to improve the resistance of elite soybean lines.