At the heart of bioprocesses the activity and the physiological state of microorganisms are variables still difficult to assess. Most of the information is obtained from delayed off-line measurements and remains insufficient for the development of real time control strategies to optimize the potential of micro-organisms and design high performance processes. On-line quantification of the physiological state of cells is paramount for the understanding and improvement of cell metabolism and thus to control pathways of interest. The main objective of SPECTRE is to develop an on-line system able to monitor the physiological state of microorganisms during fermentation or cell cultures. SPECTRE is partly in continuity with the work developped during the previous ANR FASST program (Programme ANR-06-BIOE-003-01-FASST : Fermentation Alcoolique d'hydrolysats lingo-cellulosiques et obtention de Souches adaptées aux Stress Technologiques). During FASST, advanced methods for the determination of yeast strain viability state were developed. In association with off-line data, on-line dielectric spectroscopy was able to track variations of cell cytoplasm conductivity and microscopy image analysis showed that cell size distribution and cell optical properties were strongly correlated with yeast cell viability. The results of the program have been positively evaluated by the ANR and ADEME expert boards. Dielectric spectroscopy (DS) has been operational for the last ten years. This technique is now routinely used in a number of cell culture and fermentation processes for the determination of biomass concentration. However, it can also give access to informations dependent on the biomass state, but has to be completed by additional techniques to access the value of biologically significant variables. The determination of total cell volume, viability, and cell size are required to calculate the membrane capacitance Cm, representative of the cell enveloppe state, and the cytoplasmic conductivity si, a marker of water and ion exchanges between cells and their environment. Off-line measurements, on samples taken during fermentation or cell cultures, give a differed access to the information provided by the DS and are not suitable for online control. The proposed SPECTRE project is based primarily on : - the study of a coupling of two innovative technologies - spatially resolved optical spectroscopy (SRS) and dielectric spectroscopy (DS) - for the online determination of cell physiological marker variables (size, membrane capacitance, intracellular conductivity...). - the implementation of associated measurement (quantitative microscopy, flow cytometry, optical density, fluorescence, ...) which will allow - the validation of the information collected by DS and SRS, and - the selection of the most relevant additional physical variables (and their associated measurement techniques) eventually able to further improve the robustness of the physiological state evaluation of the cultivated populations. The project will lead to the development of generic tools allowing the real-time control of the physiological state of microbial populations. SPECTRE connects six academic teams expert in Bioprocess Engineering and an SME, leader in the SRS domain and in the associated data analysis techniques. Each team will use cell models chosen both for their established academic and industrial interest.

ERMES is an interdisciplinary research project that mobilizes disciplines belonging to the humanities and social sciences (anthropology, sociology, education sciences), behavioral sciences (decision sciences, psychology, economics) and computer sciences (knowledge representation, machine learning). By developing a new interdisciplinary method mainly based on the combination of ethnographic, econometric, experimental and modeling approaches, ERMES aims to characterize the mechanisms of transmission of food messages between peers and the effects of peer education programs on eating behaviors. The project will compare such education actions with more commonly deployed approaches to food education (based on teacher intervention). Moreover ERMES proposes to explore the food messages that children receive and relay (especially those related to their health or environmental consequences) and to better understand which profiles of children are most likely to be influenced by these messages. The study will take place in 14 elementary schools (24 fourth grade classes) in the city of Paris (socially and economically contrasted) and the department of Seine-Saint-Denis (socially and economically contrasted). WP1 will consist of an ethnographic study in four fourth grade classes (complemented by quantitative data from questionnaires that will be used in WP2) to better understand the underlying mechanisms, in particular the role of group dynamics in children's dietary behaviors and discourses. WP2 proposes to study the short and medium term effects of food messages issued either by peers or by teachers on the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of the recipient children, with a randomized controlled trial conducted in 500 pupils. WP3 aims at presenting the results of WP1 and WP2 to different circles of experts and civil society actors in order to formulate proposals for guidelines for public action in the field of food education. The work carried out in this WP3 will also contribute more broadly to the study of behavior change and to public action on health-related behavior change. The originality of the project lies in the study of the role and influence of friendship networks on the circulation of food messages among children and their consequences on food discourse and behavior. It will be based on a mapping of the groups of friends in each class, notably by means of a questionnaire that has never been used in France. ERMES comes from a multi-actor research project supported since 2020 by the ARS Île-de-France, bringing together scientists, a local authority in Seine-Saint-Denis, school and extracurricular professionals, as well as associative actors who deal with health promotion among young people (MODALITEA project). This framework will ensure effective dissemination of research results and, in particular, improve health education programs and specify the conditions that will make these programs more effective.

Cereal grains are the most important renewable resource for human food and animal feed. About 55% of the 35 MT French wheat production is exported each year making France a major actor on the international market. However, French wheat has to face the production of other wheat growing countries whose agronomical practices favour low production prices and/or high protein content of grains, one of the main quality criteria of wheat. EVAGRAIN focuses on the technological facet of the wheat quality defined as the ability to meet expectations for a given end-use. Measuring the technological quality is crucial for determining the market price, but besides the protein content, very few other criteria are actually used. Yet, wheat quality is complex, especially as agricultural trends change: i) climate change imposes increasing abiotic constraints on crops and ii) new sustainable agricultural practices arise from the market and societal demands. As a result the harvest quality and quantity get more heterogeneous which has significant adverse consequences on the agri-food chain, from storage to bakery product quality. Clearly a more robust and versatile evaluation system of grain quality is needed to answer the quality demand for a large range of uses, to anticipate more severe quality variations consecutive to global warming and to compete on the international market. The ambition of EVAGRAIN is to design a Decision Support System (DSS) which can integrate knowledge about wheat quality and deliver plausible interpretations of quality tests results: i) for various end-uses in industry and ii) based on analytical data. A second objective is to explore innovative analytical quality tests. Finally, a third objective is to support knowledge transfer from cereal science and technology to economic actors of the cereal sector. To reach these objectives the DSS will involve model-based assessment systems allowing comprehensive accounts of the dependences between the behavioural properties (protein aggregation capacity, dough visco-elasticity…) and the quality criteria (dough stickiness, bread loaf volume, biscuit colour…). The final DSS will integrate knowledge and data about grain and cereal products from different sources as database, literature, existing models, experts…Especially, research in cereal science has shown that beyond the content and nature of the proteins other grain components, such as lipids and pentosans, but also water status can deeply influence the technological behaviour of grains and the cereal product quality. The project will investigate these compounds allowing to establish possible relationships with protein behaviours and grain quality. This new knowledge will be integrated to the DSS to improve its performances. The final system will be implemented as a web-tool, usable by any actor of the cereal sector eager to assess the quality of wheat grain with three major outputs: -The prediction of the quality of wheat with respect to end-use. - An explicit account of the reasoning underlying the prediction of quality - An assessment of the uncertainty of the outcomes. EVAGRAIN is an interdisciplinary project that combines modelling approaches, experimental research and technological developments. A strong expertise on wheat quality is gathered from the institutional and industrial partners of the project, which will be reinforced by a scientific and technical advisory committee selected from VegepolysValley stakeholders. The food industry is facing a growing need for process optimization based on detailed resource characterization. This project will pave the way for the development of new standards to qualify wheat grain by promoting new assessment practices. EVAGRAIN's operational development will be limited to bread-making and biscuits, for which there are more data from the literature and the expertise of EVAGRAIN's partners.

Plant residues are an abundant source of renewable matter, but require targeted dissociation at the tissue scale for the design of high-quality products. This is a huge scientific challenge that crucially depends on the variety of the compositions and histological structures of plant tissues as well as the complex physics of grinding, involving the poorly-understood flow of breakable particles of various shapes and properties. The ambition of this project is to elaborate a generic multiscale approach for realistic modeling of plant comminution accounting for both cellular and granular microstructures of plant residues. This bottom-up approach will proceed from the mechanical and physicochemical interactions at the scale of the relevant constituents (cells, envelopes, organs...) to model intercellular dissociation with the goal of developing single-particle fracture laws that will be validated experimentally and included in dynamic simulations of a large number of particles at the process scale. The methodology that we propose is based on state-of-the art computational (Peridynamics, Discrete Elements) and experimental (histology, multispectral imaging, tomography, milling) approaches. It will be organized in three work packages dealing with 1) Mechanics of fracture at the cell/tissue scales, 2) Fracture behavior at the scale of a single plant residue particle, and 3) Fragmentation process of plant material. The consortium is composed of three partners with complementary expertise, involving early-career and confirmed researchers. The project will benefit from the longstanding experience with tissue characterization methods and grinding of vegetal powders in Montpellier and X-ray and neutron imaging in Grenoble. The originality of PlantCom lies in its multiscale and cross-disciplinary nature, bridging powder process with fracture mechanics and the rheology of granular materials, to elaborate a physics-based toolkit for plant comminution.

INTACTBioPack is a 36-month time-frame project involving a pan-Mediterranean consortium of 11 partners that aims to foster the adoption by the Mediterranean region, of novel, cost-competitive, biodegradable, and reusable food packaging, able to reduce food waste and loss. This relies on three main objectives: 1. Developing innovative home-compostable food-packaging materials, covering the dual functions of protective barrier and active food ingredient, as well as a reusable sensor (vegetal layer coupled with low-cost RFID) and colorimetric sensor to monitor food freshness during storage at home. 2. Exploring the potentialities of bio- and microbiome-based solutions to design consumer “self-packing” solutions to preserve and upcycle at-home leftovers or unconsumed but still edible raw fresh produce. 3. Enabling a general strategy for designing safe, sustainable, and efficient biodegradable, active packaging solutions by the deployment of generalised methodologies, mathematical tools, business plans and guidelines. Stemming from consortium’s complementarity and cross sector expertise, the philosophy of INTACTBioPack is to develop a replicable, holistic approach to design safe and working, smart and active packaging solutions, that enhance food quality & shelf-life, inform on food freshness and even transform the product (e.g., fermentation process) to decrease food waste and loss especially at home. By broadening the range of bioactive substances to microbiotes and focusing on abundant bio-based resources (e.g., cellulose, agricultural residues), upcycled with high added value constituents (e.g., probiotics, essential oils), INTACTBioPack is fully contributing to scope and impacts of Thematic Area 3, “Sustainable Mediterranean food value chain for regional and local development” of PRIMA 2023 Work Plan and, more specifically, topic 2.3.1 of section 2. The materials developed will be demonstrated on a selection of relevant food case studies for the Mediterranean region (e.g., bread, dairy, fruits and vegetable, seafoods).