InnoPlant stakes

InnoPlant’s ambitions are to:

• Propose a comprehensive biotechnological approach combined with a socio-economic approach to competitiveness in the seed potato sector;
• Transform the expectations of professionals into research questions that will engender innovations and improvements in the sanitary quality of seed potatoes (and in the territories where they are produced) by improving varietal resistance to pathogens, and incorporate these innovations in integrated seed potatoes management;
• Strengthen the historic partnership between research and the seed potato sector in the context of a competitive and changing marketplace that involves:
  •  new importing countries,
  • increasing segmentation of the potato industry and varietal diversification,
  • changes in modes of production in the context of regulatory and environmental changes and the emergence of new diseases

InnoPlant is a working program that combines research, development, prospective, and transfer on four major themes:

• Seed health. In the context of eco-environmental constraints, the focus is on the characterization and epidemiology of the most important existing and emerging pests and on the development of innovative techniques for their detection and control;
• Breeding for sustainable genetic resistance against pathogens;
• Development of integrated production strategies/pest management;
• Prospective actions to increase the competitiveness of the seed sector, not only in Europe but worldwide, and to predict end-users’ new requirements.

Capital gains expected from InnoPlant

This ambitious project should lead to significant gains both for research and for the seed potato industry:

• Transversal or integrated approaches (e.g. detection, resistance to or control of a wide range of pest and diseases);
• New research fields (e.g. socio-economics);
• Pooling of the range of different skills held by (potato) pathologists and zoologists, plant geneticists, breeders, and laboratory and field personnel;
• Better visibility and coordination of research and support for new projects and collaboration;