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Reposted by Germain Montazeaud

Journal of Experimental Botany @jxbotany.bsky.social · 6d

🌱 RESEARCH 🌱

Wheat varieties with a high root projected area in pure stands experience a strong relaxation of below-ground competition in mixtures at the seedling stage under resource-limited conditions – Montazeaud et al.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...

#PlantScience 🧪 @germtz.bsky.social

Fig. 1.Experimental design. (A and B) Close-up views of RhizoTubes® showing wheat seedlings and their roots. (C) Spatial distribution of the seedlings within the RhizoTubes® in both pure (up) and mixed (bottom) stands. Different colours represent different genotypes. (D) Schematic representation of the experiment; each dark square represents a RhizoTube®. The green squares are the control RhizoTubes® and are all grown with the same wheat variety to check environmental heterogeneity.

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Reposted by Germain Montazeaud

Marie Monniaux @mariemonniaux.bsky.social · 26d

Check out this cool work from @crouxevo.bsky.social and others, congrats!!! 🥳
Rapid establishment of species barriers in plants compared with that in animals | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Rapid establishment of species barriers in plants compared with that in animals

Speciation, the process by which new reproductively isolated species emerge from ancestral populations, results from the gradual accumulation of barriers to gene flow within genomes. To date, the noti...

www.science.org

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Germain Montazeaud @germtz.bsky.social · Sep 5

Stay tuned for the upcoming call for contributions!

Germain Montazeaud @germtz.bsky.social · Sep 5

Among many symposia, I'll be co-animating one on genetic models accounting for intra-specific interactions, covering trees, plants, animals, with Piter Bijma (WUR) as an invited.

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Germain Montazeaud @germtz.bsky.social · Sep 5

Save the date!
Next fall (2026), we will be hosting an interdisciplinary conference on crop diversification in Paris.

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Germain Montazeaud @germtz.bsky.social · Jul 7

More information available here: listes.umontpellier.fr/sympa/d_read...

listes.umontpellier.fr

Germain Montazeaud @germtz.bsky.social · Jul 7

The PhD contract is funded by the University of Montpellier (PTL1) which covers salary for 3 years + ~ 25K functioning costs

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Germain Montazeaud @germtz.bsky.social · Jul 7

The PhD student will work on root branching phenotyping, QTL validation, and varietal mixture experiments to decipher the link between root branching, resource availability, and plant-plant interactions

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Germain Montazeaud @germtz.bsky.social · Jul 7

Our group has identified several Quantitative Trait Loci (QTLs) associated with root branching in durum wheat . Our preliminary data indicate that these QTLs associate with varietal mixture performance under contrasted environmental conditions

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Germain Montazeaud @germtz.bsky.social · Jul 7

PhD fellowship available 📢!
We are offering a 3-year fully funded PhD fellowship at the interface between functional ecology and quantitative genetics in Montpellier FR ! (Application deadline 31 July)

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Reposted by Germain Montazeaud

Charles Mullon @charlesmullon.bsky.social · May 12

Last chance to attend the school for free if you're doing your PhD in an Official Development Assistance (ODA) country ! Apply by 15 May for a full scholarship covering tuition, travel, accommodation, and meals.

Charles Mullon @charlesmullon.bsky.social · Apr 17

Applications now open for UNIL Summer School on Modelling for Evo Bio (1–6 Sept 2025, Lausanne)!
Aimed at PhD students interested in formal approaches to evolutionary ecology questions like sexual selection, social & life-history evolution. Scholarships available.
Pls share! www.shorturl.at/znk5g

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Germain Montazeaud @germtz.bsky.social · May 7

Full-text can be found here: academic.oup.com/jxb/advance-...

Validate User

academic.oup.com

Germain Montazeaud @germtz.bsky.social · May 7

This was only possible thanks to the use of the high-throughput root phenotyping platform 4pmi
at @inrae-france.bsky.social

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Germain Montazeaud @germtz.bsky.social · May 7

and thus they disengage from the arms race for root proliferation and biomass accumulation. Very interesting to see such belowground plasticity in response to plant neighbours, and to identify this plasticity as a target trait for plant breeding and mixture assembly!

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Germain Montazeaud @germtz.bsky.social · May 7

This is because highly competitive varieties tend to over-produce roots in monoculture because they have a highly competitive neighbour (i.e., themselves). In mixture, such highly competitive varieties benefit from having, on average, weaker competitors,

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Germain Montazeaud @germtz.bsky.social · May 7

New paper out in @jxbotany.bsky.social! 🌱🌾

We found that mixing different wheat varieties can decrease belowground competition at early growth stages, especially under resource limited conditions.

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