[HDR defence] 06/11/2025 - Loup Rimbaud: "Effective, sustainable and profitable management strategies for plant pathogens" (Plant Pathology - INRAE)

Loup Rimbaud will submit his habilitation to direct research (HDR) on 6 November 2025.

Date and place

06/11/2025 at 2pm
Avignon University, Hannah Arendt campus, thesis room

Theme of the presentation

Effective, sustainable and profitable management strategies for plant pathogens

Laboratory

Plant Pathology (INRAE)

Discipline

Agricultural sciences

Composition of the jury

• Ivan Sache: Professor / Plant pathology & epidemiology / AgroParisTech / Ecology, Adaptation and Interactions Department
• Pauline Ezanno: DR / Animal Epidemiology Modelling / Inrae / UMR BIOEPAR
• Frédéric Hamelin: Professor / Animal epidemiology modelling / Institut Agro Rennes / Plant Ecology and Health Teaching Unit
• Eugénie Hébrard: DR / Virus emergence and adaptation / IRD / UMR PHIM
• Josselin Montarry: CRCN / Adaptation of pathogens to plant resistance / INRAE / UMR IGEPP

Summary

It is essential to define effective, profitable and sustainable pest control strategies in order to limit their spread in our agricultural crops and compensate for the economic losses they cause, and to do so over the long term despite their evolutionary potential, which enables them to adapt to the methods applied in the field. Combining experimental biology and mathematical modelling, my research project aims to identify such strategies against crop pathogens.

To do this, I first seek to understand the biology of interactions between pathogens and their host plant or potential vectors. In particular, this has enabled me to unravel the key factors in the recent epidemics of cucumber mosaic virus in Espelette chilli fields.

It is also necessary to evaluate and optimise control strategies on large spatial and temporal scales. To this end, I have co-developed the landsepi model, designed to measure the epidemiological, evolutionary and economic performance of a range of varietal resistance deployment strategies.

Finally, to ensure that such research has an impact on society, I seek to identify strategies that meet the needs of the farming profession, for example by co-constructing management scenarios with the sectors, and to pass on my knowledge to the students I teach and the young scientists I mentor.