The elevation of atmospheric CO2 leads to a decline in plant mineral content, which might pose a significant threat to food security in coming decades. Although few genes have been identified for the negative effect of elevated CO2 on plant mineral composition, several studies suggest the existence of genetic factors. Here, we performed a large-scale study to explore genetic diversity of plant ionome responses to elevated CO2, using six hundred Arabidopsis thaliana accessions, representing geographical distributions ranging from worldwide to regional and local environments. We show that growth under elevated CO2 leads to a global decrease of ionome content, whatever the geographic distribution of the population. We observed a high range of genetic diversity, ranging from the most negative effect to resilience or even to a benefit in response to elevated CO2. Using genome-wide association mapping, we identified a large set of genes associated with this response, and we demonstrated that the function of one of these genes is involved in the negative effect of elevated CO2 on plant mineral composition. This resource will contribute to understand the mechanisms underlying the effect of elevated CO2 on plant mineral nutrition, and could help towards the development of crops adapted to a high-CO2 world.

Abstract Tomato crops are attacked by several pests, including mites. While the main predatory mites are not effective enough to control mite pests due to problems with plant dispersal and establishment (associated with glandular trichomes - GT - on leaves and stems), recent studies have shown encouraging results with the European endemic phytoseiid Typhlodromus (Anthoseius) recki. The first objective of the present study was to assess the ability of this species to disperse along the tomato stem, considering six genotypes of Solanum lycopersicum, S. peruvianum and S. cheesmaniae with contrasted trichome numbers and types of stem trichomes, accuratetly characterised in a previous study. As morphological variation in body size has been observed within the species T. (A.) recki, the second objective was to determine how predator morphological traits can explain dispersal along the tomato stem. For this, ambulatory dispersal ability of females was tested in lab conditions on the eight Solanum genotypes. Then, the females were mounted on slides and body dimensions measured. No effect of the tomato genotypes was observed on the dispersal ability of the predator. However, specimens that succeeded in crossing the stem, had a higher mobility time than those that failed. Furthermore, body width at midbody and dorsal shield length were negatively correlated with dispersal ability. This suggests that the more slender and relatively small the specimens, the more are mobile and able to successfully cross the stem, regardless of the plant genotype considered. The number of glandular trichomes type (GT) VI and to a lesser extent GT I and IV, and non-glandular trichomes (NGT) II&III appear to limit dispersal. The GT VI seems to have a repellent effect, inducing mite escape in some cases. On the opposite, the number of NGT V were positively correlated with high mobility and stem crossing rates. Assuming that the main barrier to biological control efficiency is dispersal along tomato stems, the results obtained here should have implications for biological control success. The proportion of mites with 'optimal dimensions' appears to be low and further studies should be undertaken to better assess the proportion of mites with such ideal dimensions in different populations and also to determine whether these morphological traits are associated with different feeding abilities and/or abiotic conditions.

Crises such as natural disasters and public health emergencies generate vast amounts of text data, making it challenging to classify the information into relevant categories. Acquiring expert-labeled data for such scenarios can be difficult, leading to limited training datasets for text classification by fine-tuning BERT-like models. Unfortunately, traditional data augmentation techniques only slightly improve F1-scores. How can data augmentation be used to obtain better results in this applied domain? In this paper, using neural network explicability methods, we aim to highlight that fine-tuned BERT-like models on crisis corpora give too much importance to spatial information to make their predictions. This overfitting of spatial information limits their ability to generalize especially when the event which occurs in a place has evolved and changed since the training dataset has been built. To reduce this bias, we propose GeoNLPlify,1 a novel data augmentation technique that leverages spatial information to generate new labeled data for text classification related to crises. Our approach aims to address overfitting without necessitating modifications to the underlying model architecture, distinguishing it from other prevalent methods employed to combat overfitting. Our results show that GeoNLPlify significantly improves F1-scores, demonstrating the potential of the spatial information for data augmentation for crisis-related text classification tasks. In order to evaluate the contribution of our method, GeoNLPlify is applied to three public datasets (PADI-web, CrisisNLP and SST2) and compared with classical natural language processing data augmentations.

Abstract Parental stress can impact progeny neurodevelopment and long-term behavior through gamete-mediated non-genetic inheritance (i.e., by mechanisms that do not involve transmission of genetic alleles). While intergenerational effects have been studied in males, maternal non-genetic mechanisms shaping long-term progeny behavior remain unknown in vertebrates. We focused on AUTS2, a gene maternally repressed in the fish oocyte following maternal stress and associated with human neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs). Here we show, using a model fish species, that maternal auts2a (the ortholog of human AUTS2) loss of function impacts progeny long-term behavior and modulates gene expression in neural cells during early neurodevelopment, including NDD-associated genes. We found that auts2a expression in the mother/oocyte regulates maternally-inherited factors, particularly transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulators required for early embryonic development before zygotic genome activation. Our results unravel a non-genetic mechanism of maternal inheritance and shed new light on the intergenerational determinism of neurodevelopment and behavior in a vertebrate species. Moreover, we found that AUTS2 belongs to a group of 45 evolutionarily-conserved oocyte genes, associated with behavior and neurodevelopment in vertebrates and linked to severe human diseases, raising the question of the role of maternal factors in the determinism of NDDs.

It is now recognized that a better understanding of prescriber behaviour is needed to improve antimicrobial stewardship programmes. Most studies conducted in the livestock sector have focused on farmers' perspectives, while the prescribing habits of veterinarians have remained overlooked. Our study explored the psychosocial determinants associated with antibiotic prescribing practices in the French poultry sector by analysing the informal norms and unwritten rules that influence veterinarians' prescribing decisions. A qualitative study was conducted in four French regions in February 2021. Using the biographical narrative interpretive method, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 poultry veterinarians with varying professional experience. Three main themes were retained for data analysis: (i) compliance with and deviations from prescribing recommendations, (ii) the influence of fellow veterinarians on antibiotic decisions and (iii) the key role of veterinary corporate groups. When prescribing antibiotics, junior veterinarians were strongly influenced by senior veterinarians who acted as role models driving clinical practices. Prescribing habits were shared through peer networks in which veterinarians participated throughout their careers. Finally, veterinary corporate groups helped to shape veterinarians' prescribing habits by promoting existing guidelines and even producing in-house recommendations. We show that, in parallel with official guidelines, prescribing habits circulate among veterinarians and are shared in professional circles. Therefore, antimicrobial stewardship interventions should focus not only on official guidelines and communication channels, but also unwritten professional rules and organizations influencing veterinarians' prescribing practices.

AbstractThe European Union's soil strategy for 2030 has set the objective of achieving ‘healthy soils’ in Europe by 2050. To achieve this ambitious goal, dedicated soil science skills will be needed in the future. This article presents the results of a survey on soil science skills for the future conducted within the framework of the European Joint Program—EJP SOIL. The survey was distributed online in the 24 countries participating in the EJP SOIL. The skills were expressed as having knowledge in particular topics related to soils, practical know‐hows or abilities or outcomes of knowledge and know‐hows put into action. No significant differences in the importance of soil‐science related skills were found between countries or stakeholder categories. The two groups of skills that ranked at the top of stakeholders' concern were ‘Having a scientific basis of knowledge on soils and their functioning’ and ‘Knowing how to mobilise agronomic drivers to manage and protect soils’. This means that there is a need for people with an in‐depth knowledge in soil science, but also soil scientists with integrated knowledge in agronomy and crop production. Three important findings relate to the knowledge of soil science itself: (i) there is a clear need to develop the knowledge of the biological and ecological functioning of soil; (ii) this should not happen at the expense of a strong general knowledge of the fundamentals of soil science; (iii) future soil scientists should be trained to have a more holistic appreciation of soil rather than be trained as a specialist of a specific aspect of soil science only. Being able to exchange knowledge with farmers, knowing how to assess soil fertility, quality or health and how to improve them are viewed as essential skills for the future. These findings offer a clear path for the evolution of soil science education curricula across Europe.

In October 2022, v-shaped necrotic lesions were observed on the leaf margins of field-grown winter oilseed rape (WOSR), Brassica napus L., in western France (Ille-et-Vilaine (35) and Maine-et-Loire (49) departments). Disease incidence on volunteers and cultivated WOSR was generally low (5-10 %) but occasionally up to 80% on some fields. Leaf sections sampled from the margin of necrotic leaf tissue were dilacerated in sterile deionized water and the extract was spread onto tryptone soya agar (TSA) with cycloheximide (100 mg.L-1) and Polyflor (Syngenta, France) (2ml.L-1, containing 5 mg.L-1 propiconazole) then incubated at 28°C for 2 days. Colonies were yellow-pigmented, mucoid, and convex, which are morphological characteristics of Xanthomonas spp. colonies. The partial fyuA and gyrB gene sequences were amplified for eight isolated strains (CFBP 9155, CFBP 9156, CFBP 9157, CFBP 9158, CFBP 9159, CFBP 9161, CFBP 9162, and CFBP 9163) using primers of Fargier et al. (2011), and sequenced (Genoscreen, France). The sequences were deposited under numbers OR232891 to OR232898 for fyuA and OR634932 to OR634939 for gyrB. BLASTN analysis of the sequenced fyuA amplicon showed 100% identity and query coverage with the fyuA fragment of Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris (Xcc) CFBP 6865R (Bellenot et al., 2022). BLASTN analysis of the sequenced gyrB amplicon showed two allelic forms: one showed 100% identity and query coverage with the gyrB fragment of Xcc strain CFBP 6865R (Bellenot et al., 2022), the other one showed 100% identity and query coverage with the type strain Xcc CFBP 5241 (ATCC33913) (Vorhölter et al., 2003). Moreover, two qPCR tools were used to identify the strains successfully as Xcc (Köhl et al., 2011; Rezki et al., 2016) which target the same gene encoding a hypothetical protein and whose primers overlap. The pathogenicity of the eight isolated strains was validated using a bacterial suspension (108 CFU.ml-1) for i) leaf spraying until runoff onto the leaf surfaces of WOSR plants previously maintained at saturated humidity for 48 hours, ii) wound-leaf inoculation of the two youngest true leaves with scissors that had been dipped into the bacterial suspension. Both tests were performed on 3-week-old WOSR plants of the Aviso (INRAE) genotype. Deionized water was used as negative control. Strains CFBP 5241 and the strain CFBP 4954 (Fargier et al., 2007) were used as positive controls for disease expression. Tested plants (seven for spray inoculation and four for wound-leaf inoculation per strain and control condition) were incubated in a greenhouse at 20°C/24°C (night/day). Isolated strains and the strain CFBP 4954 caused yellow lesions with both inoculation methods that necrotized starting about 10 days post inoculation (dpi). The spots coalesced within 14 dpi to form necrotic areas. The type strain CFBP 5241 caused mild symptoms, with only yellow lesions that did not coalesce. Plants inoculated with water remained symptomless. To complete Koch's postulate, re-isolations were achieved. Re-isolated strains on TSA showed the same colony morphology as described above. All re-isolated strains were identified as Xcc based on partial gyrB sequencing and Xcc specific qPCR test (Rezki et al., 2016). This first report in France and the recent identification in Serbia (Popović et al., 2013) may illustrate the emergence of the disease on this crop in Europe. The prevalence and consequences of this disease should be evaluated over a wider geographic area.

Abstract Riparian corridors often act as low-land climate refugia for temperate tree species in their southern distribution range. A plausible mechanism is the buffering of regional climate extremes by local physiographic and biotic factors. We tested this idea using a 3-year-long microclimate dataset collected along the Ciron river, a refugia for European beech (Fagus sylvatica) in southwestern France. Across the whole network, canopy gap fraction was the main predictor for spatial microclimatic variations, together with two other landscape features (elevation above the river and woodland fraction within a 300m radius). However, within the riparian forest only (canopy gap fraction < 25%, distance to the river < 150m), variations of up to -4°C and + 15% in summertime daily maximum air temperature and minimum relative humidity, respectively, were still found from the plateau to the cooler, moister river banks, only ~ 5-10m below. Elevation above the river was then identified as the main predictor, and explained the marked variations from the plateau to the banks much better than canopy gap fraction. The microclimate measured near the river is as cool but moister than the macroclimate encountered at 700-1000m asl further east in F. sylvatica's main distribution range. Indeed, at all locations, we found that air relative humidity was higher than expected from a temperature-only effect, suggesting that extra moisture is brought by the river. Our results explain well why beech trees in this climate refugium are restricted to the river gorges where microtopographic variations are the strongest and canopy gaps are rare.