Missions

VICITA is a multidisciplinary team focused on cereal viruses in tropical agro-ecosystems (rice, sorghum and millet) and organized in 3 complementary and interconnected research axes :

• Reconstruct, monitor and model the emergence and dynamics of viral strains.
• Decipher the molecular mechanisms of plant / virus / microorganism interactions (susceptibility/ resistance, suppression of silencing / resistance-breakdown, competition / synergy / interspecific adaptation).
• Analyze the interactions between viruses and their environment in terms of agricultural practices in the field, genetic diversity of host plants and other pathogenic microorganisms in co-infection.

General objectives

Our general objective is to better understand, manage and anticipate viral epidemics in complex tropical agro-ecosystems composed of multiple hosts and microorganisms.

• Develop viral diagnostic tools and contribute to the epidemiological surveillance of viruses on rice, sorghum and millet.
• Identify resistance sources, in natural diversity or through biotechnology, and contribute to optimize their sustainability.

Research themes / disciplines

• Viral ecology: molecular biology and metagenomics.
• Epidemiology: molecular and phylodynamic epidemiology.
• Functional biology: genetics, experimental evolution, molecular biology and biochemistry.

Study scale

From molecules to continents