Science at UM [S03-ep09]: Neighbor-modulated susceptibility in plants

[Podcast] - Published on November 23, 2023 in Science-Society

This week on A l’UM la science, Jean-Benoit Morel, researcher at the Montpellier Plant Health Institute (Phim), talks to us about plant immunity. Our report takes us to the Smel technical platform with Valentin Kempf. Finally, Nathan Roure, press relations officer at UM, presents the program for the Sud de sciences science film festival. The program is broadcast every Wednesday at 6 p.m. on Divergence FM 93.9.

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Ah, neighbors! My mother always told me to get angry with whoever I wanted, but not with my neighbors. And yet... When you live in the city, it's hard to stay calm when the bass from the girl upstairs keeps vibrating the bed frame at 5 a.m. or when the guy downstairs has once again squatted your parking space because he reserves his own for his RV. You might say that it's no better in the countryside, between the lunatics who poison cats and those who mow their lawns at 7 a.m. on Sundays... Yes, neighbors can be a pain.

And remember Covid. Our horrified looks in the elevator when we saw a nose peeking out from under a mask, or the atmosphere at meetings and family meals when a simple sneeze became more threatening than a bomb in the subway. Depending on the context or the density of our spaces, our neighbors can become hell... Just as they can also be our best defenses against the vagaries of life, and here again I refer you to Covid. Perhaps one of the most beautiful contemporary demonstrations that collective strategy, whether it be a mask or a jab, can contribute to better resistance to disease.

What if plants did the same thing? What if, in a wheat field, the proximity of each ear of wheat could have a positive or negative impact on their resistance to disease? This is what Jean-Benoît Morel, researcher and director of the Phim laboratory at the Plant Health Institute in Montpellier, sought to find out by testing the impact of proximity on the disease resistance of different varieties of wheat and rice. The results were published in the journal PLOS Biology.

Learn more:

Read the publication
See the press release
Listen also to the program A l’UM la science (Science at UM)“Varietal blends at the food technology workshop.”

In the second part of the program, we continue our exploration of the Mediterranean coastal environment station in Sète with Valentin Kempf, focusing on the analytical platform.