HOLOFLUX

 Holobionts and microbial flux within agrifood systems

.

© INRAE
Article

25 September 2023

Redaction: Com / DC

How successions of microbial communities in the production chain for cereal-based foods determine final product quality

The HoloGrain initiative mobilises several INRAE teams whose work targets a particular stage in the production chain (pre- or post-harvest) or a specific issue. This network will make it possible to integrate the various stages and to follow a wheat grain holobiont throughout the agri-food chain.
Azzedine Rouichi - Unsplash
The TANDEM project aims to better understand how micro-organisms in the dairy food chain respond to the changes associated with agroecological transition.
Chicks INRAE
The EggToMeat project aims at identifying the impact of farming parameters on the flux of microbiota along the chicken production chain, from eggs to carcasses. For that purpose, two housing conditions (indoors vs outdoor range) will be compared on a single batch of embryonated eggs.
© INRAE
The INT-BXL project deals with the bioremediation of polluted river sediments and agricultural soils. In agroecosystems, the contamination of soils by xenobiotic compounds, such as pesticides used in conventional agriculture and antibiotics used to treat livestock or supplied via organic soil fertilisation, can lead to the transfer of these compounds, and/or their degradation intermediaries, towards surface and ground water, thus contaminating all water resources.

We are all holobionts!

Superior organisms (plants, animals and humans) live in close association with cohorts of micro-organisms: bacteria, fungi, viruses, etc. These microbiotas and their hosts form an entity called a holobiont (from the Greek words holos, or “all”, and bios, “life”). The Holoflux metaprogramme focuses on the constitution, dynamics and management of holobionts by studying host-micro-organism interactions and the microbial fluxes between them within different environments.

The environments studied are agrifood systems in the broadest sense, from the production of foods (crops, harvest, processing, storage) to their distribution, consumption and the management of waste and by-products. Holoflux takes particular account of the challenges of a healthy and sustainable diet, and the preservation of plant, animal and human health.

Figure-HOLOFLUX-1-EN_reference

► Browse all topics

  • The HOLOFLUX metaprogramme and the other metaprogrammes mentioned on this website are interdisciplinary scientific programming tools of the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE).
  • For more information on all metaprograms, see the INRAE metaprogrammes page.