News

Christian Jay-Allemand (UM) and Luc Bidel (INRAE) win the 2022 Carnot Grand Prize for collaborative research

[] - Published on in Press Room

Christian Jay-Allemand (UM) and Luc Bidel (INRAE), both researchers at the Iate laboratory (Agopolymer Engineering and Emerging Technologies), won the Carnot Grand Prize for Research . Their project, called ESBAC (Selective Ecoextraction of Active Biomolecules), aims to develop natural antifungal agents for the agri-food industry in collaboration with the company Antofenol. The prize, worth €10,000, was awarded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research at the Carnot Exhibition held in Paris on October 12 and 13.

Limiting food spoilage

Natural antifungals help limit food spoilage caused by pathogenic fungi. These fungi have become a major concern in the agri-food sector, and the question of how to limit these losses is becoming increasingly important, particularly with regard to post-harvest losses (linked to the activities of cooperatives in particular) that use petrochemical-based fungicides.

The work of Christian Jay-Allemand and Luc Bidel aimed to find a solution to this problem. The objective was to enrich a complex plant extract obtained by eco-extraction of crushed vine shoots with molecules of interest, using a prototype initially developed by the company Antofénol, in close collaboration with the IES (Bernard Orsal, UM) and our laboratory. The ESBAC project has two objectives. First, to search for the family of phenolic active molecules capable of inhibiting various pathogenic fungi responsible for post-harvest food spoilage. Second, to develop a new pre-industrial process based on molecular imprints (MIPs) capable of selectively enriching complex extracts from woody biomass with target molecules. The ultimate goal is not only to demonstrate the effectiveness of vine wood extract
s according to grape variety, but also to control the quality of commercialized extracts in direct relation to their antifungal properties. This success and the award of the Carnot Prize are the result of significant collaborative work, which has found its scientific dynamism at the heart of strong links between research and university education and which will ultimately lead to processes suitable for industrial development.

A project made possible thanks to strong interdisciplinary collaboration between the University of Montpellier and Antofenol.

Antofenol, founded on our Triolet university campus in 2016, specializes in plant eco-extraction for the development of biocontrol products (natural extracts that can replace pesticides). This partnership between Antofenol and the University of Montpellier was formed in 2012, thanks to the decisive impetus of Fanny Rolet, a former graduate of our DTEC-Bio Master's program (now IBION-Tec) and CEO of Antofenol. The company, which became a priority partner of the UM in 2018 thanks to the creation of the ESBAC project, has secured a total budget of more than €370,000, managed by the University of Montpellier
, to develop new strategies and technological devices for enriching complex extracts based on molecular fingerprints. The project is also co-financed by the Occitanie Region and the European Union. These strong links between training, research, and innovation/business are at the root of Antofenol's success. It is undoubtedly both a human R&D adventure based on high-level interdisciplinary skills (management, plant biology, metabolism, polyphenols, optoelectronics, machining, etc.) and a dynamic operating system that is rare within an optimized laboratory space that fully integrates this partnership.

The Carnot Grand Prize in a nutshell

The Carnot Prize for Research , created by the Association of Carnot Institutes, is intended to highlight the remarkable achievements of its members in the field of research partnerships between a Carnot Institute and a company, in order to reward the researchers who initiated such partnerships. Several prizes were awarded during the 2022 Carnot Meetings, such as the partnership led by a young researcher, partnership-based research supporting the creation of a spin-off, partnership-based research with an SME-ETI, and finally the long-term partnership (3 years or more), for which the University won the prize. Each prize is awarded on a personal basis to the researcher or team in charge of the partnership (prizes of €5,000 and €10,000).

Practical information