Research projects

Here are some examples of our current research projects.

(see also: BioPopEvol team's projects; )

Forgenius

Forgenius - Improving accessto FORest GENetic Resources Information and Services forEnd-USers. https://www.forgenius.eu/

FORGENIUS — an H2020 project, funded by the EU, coordinated by INRAE URFM, running from 2021 to 2025 — will give an insight into the diversity of European forests and their resilience to climate change.

The project uses state-of-the-art technology and knowledge in plant and evolutionary biology, ecology, remote-sensing, genomics, genetics, modelling, and forestry. It aims to upgrade the current European Information System on Forest Genetic Resources (EUFGIS) platform, by adding new types of data and information on the Genetic Conservation Units (GCU), allowing predictions of the fate of European forests in the short, medium, and long term. Such a tool will be the key to invent new, adaptive strategies to preserve these extraordinary natural assets at the continental level. 

OptForest

OCCIGEN. https://uefm.paca.hub.inrae.fr/axe-sciences-forestieres/les-projets/occigen

This Project is led by URFM. It is funded by the Occitanie region (2021-2024).

Old-growth forests may be reservoirs of diversity with high potentials for adaptation in the face of environmental change. They can also be genetic rarities, such as the relict populations of Salzmann’s pine. Woodlands resulting from national plantation programs such as the restoration of mountain landscape (RTM) campaigns at the end of the 19th century, and the later national forestry fund for reforestation (FFN) of the mid-20th century, both of which mostly used non-local provenances, now make up a mosaic of old-growth and new-growth forests.

Hybridization is not without consequences for local genetic diversity and adaptation, and it is the focus of the OcciGen project. The project will select a sub-set of Occitanie's ancient and old-growth forests to test their resilience against that of recent plantation forests. This resilience will be assessed using ecological indicators, drought resistance, bird fauna and genetic biodiversity. Results will be used to define essential biodiversity indicators. The outcomes of this project will be used to support high-level decisions, for example at the level of the national commission for forest genetic resources (CRGF) and at the level of the European program for the conservation of forest resources (EUFORGEN), but also regionally through the Regional Strategy for Biodiversity 2020-2030 (SrB).

This national project brings together 15 partners on 40 sites and focuses on Beech, Fir, Salzmann’s Pine and Black Pine.

D2KAB - From Data to Knowledge in Agronomy and Biodiversity. https://anr.fr/Projet-ANR-18-CE23-0017

D2KAB - an ANR-funded project of which the URFM is a partner (2019 - 2023). It sets up the processes for extracting and formalizing knowledge (data to knowledge) - semantically rich, interoperable, open - from agronomy/agriculture and biodiversity/ecology data. The project also studies scientific methods and tools for exploiting and disseminating this knowledge in different agricultural and biodiversity scenarios.