Objectifs

The current possibility for massive sequencing data production have opened new opportunities to understand with unprecedented resolution, the organization and dynamics of genomes and the related keys to a more efficient exploitation of plant diversity in breeding programs. However, this also brought up new challenges since the full exploitation of these data requires development of new biomathematic / bioinformatic concepts, methods and tools.

The objective of GenomeHarvest is to tackle this challenge thanks to the strength of Montpellier as a platform of excellence in agricultural sciences, but also in mathematics, ecology and evolutionary sciences. We shall establish a collaborative framework between these various scientific sectors making use of carefully selected representative, economically important and scientifically attractive biological models. We will focus on aspects related to the frequent inter(sub)specific events involved in the history of crops and develop methodologies to decipher the inter(sub)specific structure of crop genomes and its impact on character transmission. We will

• Federate biomathematics, bioinformatics and plant genomics communities through the formalization and the realization of synergistic research action with joint supervision of students and postdocs and regular meeting with hands-on sessions on synergistic themes.
• Develop mathematical models and computational methods to characterize inter(sub)specific crop genomes using citrus, banana, coffee and rice as representative first tier cases.
• Analyze the impact of these inter(sub)specific genome structures on chromosome transmission/recombination, gene expression and thus character transmission.
• Advertise and share the project tools/results through implementation of the tools and data through the South Green portal, through capacity building and training workshops, and through the organization of scientific events.