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Context and challenges

The cereals sector is a particularly pertinent example of a food production chain comprising successive stages that are characterised by particular/different microbiotas that can influence the development of quality (health, organoleptic, nutritional and technological) of the final food.

The challenges are:

• To be able to follow a grain holobiont throughout its 'life' with shared tools and methodologies, and to characterise the determinants of its evolution leading to the preservation or development of food qualities.
• To know the microbial flux or microbial successions linked to breaks in conditions in order to identify the origins of inocula and to evaluate the importance of priority effects in the assembly of these communities. All these data will make it possible to define favourable evolution markers and integrated action levers throughout the agri-food chain.
• To study the possibility of implementing strategies for building the quality of cereal products based on the management of microbial communities at the different links in the production chain.

Scope: Cereal production chains and the different modes of cultivation, storage and processing.

Goals

The HoloGrain consortium will associate different teams in joint thinking and the sharing of data and knowledge in order to throw new light on the importance of fluxes or microbial successions, from seeds to final products, to develop the quality of cereal-based foods (wheat and barley) and to propose levers to achieve the desired quality criteria.

Its ambition is to :

• Bring together, in a shared reflection, actors involved in research on cereals interested in microbial communities and their evolution, from seed to consumed food.
• Exchange know-how, techniques and materials in order to define a methodological base that can be used throughout the food chain.
• Enable research actions already underway to progress more rapidly and facilitate their integration.
• Validate the concept of the influence of priority effects in the holobiont on the construction of product qualities, and produce a multidisciplinary synthesis of knowledge validating this concept and highlighting the remaining gaps.
• Build the basis for a research project on 'grain holobiont' from seed to consumed product, in order to propose it to national and European partners and anticipate responses to calls for projects.

INRAE Partners

Non INRAE partners