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Research and teaching centre
environmental geosciences
Research and teaching centre
environmental geosciences

RhizoCarbon+

In the context of climate change mitigation and global food security, the storage of organic matter (and associated carbon) in soils is a major issue, which was reflected at COP21 in the international "4 by 1000" initiative. This initiative aims to show that agriculture, and in particular agricultural soils, can play a crucial role in food security and climate change.

While it is well established that increasing organic matter inputs is one of the major agro-ecological levers in terms of practices to be implemented, the levers concerning their maintenance in soils (stabilisation) have not been established to date.

The RhizoCarbone+ project, proposed jointly by BIAM and CEREGE, seeks to remove this barrier.

It has a twofold objective in the service of the environmental transition:

  • The objective research aims to test a cultivation practice in a Mediterranean soil, in the laboratory, that is highly favourable to C storage by combining the increase of C inputs by root exudates, their transformation into exopolysaccharides by bacteria and the stabilisation of this C by organo-mineral interactions. Such a challenge requires taking into account the central roles of soil microorganisms.

 

  • The objective training aims to offer an online course (Massive Open Online Course, MOOC) addressing the interdisciplinary complexity, both scientific and socio-environmental, of the "4 by 1000" objectives.

2021-2024: RhizoCarbone+ (in French)

Stimulating the plant-microorganism-mineral continuum to store carbon in soils

Financing: ITEM Institute

Head of CEREGE :
Isabelle Basile-Doelsch

Partner : 

  • CEA, CNRS, BIAM, LEMIRE, Ecologie Microbienne de la Rhizosphère, St-Paul-lez-Durance

Collaboration : 

  • GIEE wine cooperative Les Marquets
  • The winegrowers of Plan de la Tour, Var
  • CP2M, Aix-Marseille University