As a CNRS research fel­low at the GEC, Éric Ruel­land spe­cial­izes in plant sig­nalling, in par­tic­u­lar, lipids—that is, the syn­the­sis of small lipid mol­e­cules that play a sig­nalling role. He is cur­rent­ly work­ing on the CNRS’s PaCha IRP (Inter­na­tion­al Resource Project), con­duct­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Viet­namese Acad­e­my of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy (VAST), notably the Insti­tute of Biol­o­gy (IB) and the Hanoi Uni­ver­si­ty of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy (USTH).

When a plant is sub­ject­ed to var­i­ous envi­ron­men­tal stress­es, it syn­the­sizes small molecules—particularly lipids—that act with­in the cells to trig­ger an appro­pri­ate response.

Giv­en the fore­see­able con­se­quences of cli­mate change on agriculture—such as water stress or, con­verse­ly, flooding—and ris­ing food demand, ensur­ing glob­al food secu­ri­ty has become a major chal­lenge of our time. Hence the need to devel­op sus­tain­able agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices to mit­i­gate the effects of cli­mate change while increas­ing crop pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. The IRP PaCha was launched by the CNRS and VAST to address this chal­lenge for rice cul­ti­va­tion in Viet­nam. The project draws on diverse areas of exper­tise, includ­ing plant sci­ences, agri­cul­tur­al tech­niques, and biotech­nol­o­gy. Among the lab­o­ra­to­ries involved in the PaCha project are, in addi­tion to the GEC at UTC, the Mont­pel­li­er Insti­tute of Plant Sci­ences (IPSiM), and, in Viet­nam, the IB and the USTH.

How did this five-year project, launched in 2026, come to be? “The IPSiM in Mont­pel­li­er has long-stand­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions with Viet­nam. As for UTC-GEC, con­tacts were estab­lished fol­low­ing a post­doc­tor­al fel­low­ship com­plet­ed by Huong To Thi Mai, a Viet­namese researcher, under the super­vi­sion of Brigitte Thomas­set. Impressed by the skills and exper­tise devel­oped with­in the lab­o­ra­to­ry, she want­ed us to con­tin­ue work­ing togeth­er once she returned to her home coun­try. “The IRP PaCha came at just the right time, so to speak. It pro­vid­ed the ide­al insti­tu­tion­al frame­work for con­tin­u­ing the col­lab­o­ra­tion while ensur­ing the mobil­i­ty of researchers from one site to the oth­er. For my part, I would par­tic­u­lar­ly like us to be able to super­vise joint doc­tor­al the­ses,” says Éric Ruelland.

The IRP PaCha aims to devel­op plant genomics approach­es to address the chal­lenges posed by the effects of cli­mate change on agri­cul­ture — and specif­i­cal­ly, in the case of Viet­nam, on rice cultivation—and to ensure its sus­tain­abil­i­ty. What is the role of each part­ner? “Our Viet­namese col­leagues in the field will sub­ject the rice plants to var­i­ous stress­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly water stress. UTC-GEC will con­tribute its exper­tise in data analy­sis. Ini­tial­ly, this will involve analysing the data pro­vid­ed by our col­leagues using two approach­es. The first con­cerns the metabolom­ic response—i.e., to the set of metabo­lites syn­the­sized by the plant in response to a par­tic­u­lar type of stress. The sec­ond, the lipidom­ic response, gives us an overview of the lipids pro­duced depend­ing on the nature of the stress expe­ri­enced. We will then com­pare the “con­trol” con­di­tion with the “stress” con­di­tion, with the goal of using cer­tain mutants gen­er­at­ed by our col­leagues in the field through gene edit­ing and select­ing the most resilient ones. For my part, I am par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the phos­pho­li­pase D (PLD) gene fam­i­ly. The objec­tive is to analyse PLD lines — enzymes that syn­the­size phos­pha­tidic acid, a sig­nalling lipid and to iden­ti­fy which ones are most — or least — resis­tant to var­i­ous stress­es. As for the IPSiM team, they are work­ing on the abil­i­ty of rice plants to absorb min­er­als and on grain fill­ing. The goal is to select vari­eties with opti­mal yield,” con­cludes Éric Ruelland.

MSD