Annette Bérard

• Dr
• French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE)

Les plantes, au travers de leur système racinaire, sont des ingénieurs du sol qui sont capables de modifier les propriétés biologiques, chimiques et physiques du sol qu’elles colonisent. Cependant, si les propriétés du sol sont généralement étudiées et considérées pour leur impact sur les plantes (prélèvement hydrominéral, croissance et rendement),...

La plaine de Crau, dans les Bouches-du-Rhône, fait actuellement l’objet d’une étude novatrice, à partir du descellement d’une plaque de béton posée là dans les années 1970. L’occasion de s’interroger sur ce que l’on veut retrouver sous ces structures industrielles, et sur ce que l’on retrouvera vraiment…

Relatively few phages that infect plant pathogens have been isolated and investigated. The Pseudomonas syringae species complex is present in various environments, including plants. It can cause major crop diseases, such as bacterial canker on apricot trees. This study presents a collection of 25 unique phage genomes that infect P. syringae . These...

Relatively few phages that infect plant pathogens have been isolated and investigated. The Pseudomonas syringae species complex is present in various environments, including plants. It can cause major crop diseases, such as bacterial canker on apricot trees. This study presents a collection of 25 unique phages genomes that infect P. syringae. These...

In response to criticism of current specialized and input-intensive agriculture, diversified farming systems (DFS) have increased in popularity. The most advanced forms of DFS include perennial components (e.g., perennial crops, trees), functionally different plants and livestock, and landscape heterogeneity. These characteristics make it more diff...

Copper-based plant protection products (PPPs) are widely used in both conventional and organic farming, and to a lesser extent for non-agricultural maintenance of gardens, greenspaces, and infrastructures. The use of copper PPPs adds to environmental contamination by this trace element. This paper aims to review the contribution of these PPPs to th...

The biophysical functioning of the rhizosphere can act on plant water use efficiency through root mucilage release and their stimulation of microorganisms' activity. Mucilage characteristics and roles are still poorly studied for the diversity of agronomic plant species. We compared mucilages collected from roots of germinated seeds (aerohydroponic...

There is growing scientific and societal consciousness that the environmental risks and impacts of plant protection products (PPPs) cannot be properly assessed without considering ecosystem services. However, the science on this issue remains incomplete and fragmented, as recently illustrated in a collective scientific assessment that pointed out t...

Environmental pollution is one of the main challenges faced by humanity. By their ubiquity and vast range of metabolic capabilities, microorganisms are affected by pollution with consequences on their host organisms and on the functioning of their environment and also play key roles in the fate of pollutants through the degradation, transformation...

There is growing interest in using the ecosystem services framework for environmental risk assessments of chemicals, including plant protection products (PPPs). Although this topic is increasingly discussed in the recent scientific literature, there is still a substantial gap between most ecotoxicological studies and a solid evaluation of potential...

Preservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services is critical for sustainable development and human well-being. However, an unprecedented erosion of biodiversity is observed and the use of plant protection products (PPP) has been identified as one of its main causes. In this context, at the request of the French Ministries responsible for the Env...

Alley cropping agroforestry-whereby tree rows are integrated in crop plots-is considered as a lever for the agroecological transition. Its benefit for enhancing soil functioning is rarely studied. We studied soil health in a 25 years temperate agroforestry plot cultivated with barley (Hordeum vulgare) according to two factors: i. the position to th...

There is growing interest in using the ecosystem services framework for environmental risk assessments of plant protection products (PPP). However, there is still a broad gap between most of the ecotoxicological endpoints used in PPP risk assessment and the evaluation of the risks and effects of PPP on ecosystem services. Here we propose a conceptu...

The rise of global food demand, depletion of natural resources and climate change are some of the biggest challenges that farmers have to face while they strive to achieve a sustainable agriculture. In this context, enhancement of soil nitrogen (N) dynamics and availability through practices like cereal seed inoculation by Plant Growth Promoting Rh...

According to the literature, biological processes in the rhizosphere could play a role in the adaptation of plants to droughts under a changing climate. A previous study has identified significantly different productivity level and fruit quality for two tomato varieties under water deficit conditions. We conducted a field study, with and without wa...

Quantifying and characterizing Extracellular Polymeric Substances (EPS) and especially exopolysaccharides (EPSac) is an issue for understanding the hydro-physical and biological functioning of the rhizosphere. However, few comparative studies of extraction techniques have been carried out on soils and none on calcareous Mediterranean soils. Three s...

Plant legacy is a concept representing the effects exerted by plants on soil once they are no longer growing. We hypothesized that plant species and mixture (intercropping) would induce different short-term legacy effects impacting carbon and nitrogen-related soil microbial activities and resistance and resilience after a heat disturbance. A microc...

Edaphic cyanobacteria and algae have been extensively studied in dryland soils because they play key roles in the formation of biological soil crusts and the stabilization of soil surfaces. Yet, in temperate agricultural crop soils, little is understood about the functional significance of indigenous photosynthetic microbial communities for various...

Seed inoculation by plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPRs) is an agronomic practice that stimulates root carbon (C) exudation and nitrogen (N) uptake. Inoculation thus increases and decreases C and N availabilities to denitrifiers in the rhizosphere, respectively. Hence, denitrification rates in the rhizosphere can be positively or negatively...

Maize inoculation by Azospirillum stimulates root growth, along with soil nitrogen (N) uptake and root carbon (C) exudation, thus increasing N use efficiency. However, inoculation effects on soil N-cycling microbial communities have been overlooked. We hypothesized that inoculation would (i) increase roots-nitrifiers competition for ammonium, and t...

AimsPhosphorus (P) is frequently limiting crop production in agroecosystems. Large progress was achieved in understanding root traits associated with P acquisition efficiency (PAE, i.e. P uptake achieved under low P conditions). Most former studies were performed in controlled environments, and avoided the complexity of soil-root interactions. This...

Les microalgues et cyanobactéries édaphiques : écologie et rôles en bioindication

A last resort means to restoring a severely degraded ecosystem can involve soil transfer, especially when destruction of an undegraded system has been previously independently planned. We measured the impact of different soil transfer treatments that varied in vertical and orderly reconstitution of the main soil horizons on the microbial activity a...

Fresh produce has been a growing cause of food borne outbreaks world-wide prompting the need for safer production practices. Yet fresh produce agrifood systems are diverse and under constraints for more sustainability. We analyze how measures taken to guarantee safety interact with other objectives for sustainability, in light of the diversity of f...

Heat waves, defined as events associating high temperatures with severe drought, are expected to become increasingly recurrent. Research has focused heavily on the impacts of drought and temperature increase on soil functioning and microbial diversity, but little attention has been paid to soil microbial community responses to combined heat-drought...

Chemical monitoring revealed a regular decrease in herbicide concentration in Lake Geneva since last decades that may be linked to an ecotoxic restoration of nontarget phytoplanktonic communities. The Pollution-induced community tolerance (PICT) approach was tested as a tool to monitor the ecotoxic restoration of Lake Geneva for herbicides from 199...

We performed a field investigation to study the long-term impacts of Pb soil contamination on soil microbial communities and their catabolic structure in the context of an industrial site consisting of a plot of land surrounding a secondary lead smelter. Microbial biomass, catabolic profiles, and ecotoxicological responses (PICT) were monitored on...

A major challenge in environmental risk assessment of pollutants is establishing a causal relationship between field exposure and community effects that integrates both structural and functional complexity within ecosystems. Pollution‐induced community tolerance (PICT) is a concept that evaluates whether pollutants have exerted a selection pressure...

The behaviour of the sporulating soil-dwelling Bacillus cereus sensu lato (B. cereus sl) which includes foodborne pathogenic strains has been extensively studied in relation to its various animal hosts. The aim of this environmental study was to investigate the water compartments (rain and soil water, as well as groundwater) closely linked to the p...

The MicroResp™ method allows soil respiration and microbial community physiological profiles to be determined colorimetrically in microplates. This method, however, neglects CO2 storage in the agar gel carrying the colorimetric indicator, and calcite dissolution associated with CO2-induced change in soil solution pH. Our objective was to improve th...

Purpose The purposes of this study were to identify the influence of a severe drought period on the impact of a subsequent heat–drought disturbance on the microbial community of a Mediterranean agricultural soil and particularly to highlight the long-term effects on the microbial catabolic profiles. Materials and methods We performed an experiment...

In the context of Climate Change, the increasing of frequency and intensity of droughts and heat waves constitutes a serious threat for agroecosystems in the Mediterranean region. Soils and their functions may be impacted by these extreme events through changes in the biomass, composition and activities of edaphic microbial communities. We designed...

Understanding the interactive effects of multiple stressors on ecosystems has started to become a major concern. The aim of our study was therefore to evaluate the consequences of a long-term exposure to environmental concentrations of Cu, Zn and As on the pollution-induced community tolerance (PICT) of lotic biofilm communities in artificial indoo...

Pollution-induced community tolerance (PICT) uses increased tolerance in populations at contaminated sites as an indicator of contaminant effects. However, given the broad structural and functional complexity that characterizes biological communities, the acquisition of PICT could vary with (i) target community, (ii) intensity of toxicant exposure,...

Aquatic ecosystems face variable exposure to pesticides, especially during floodings which are associated with short bursts of high contaminant concentrations that influence biological systems. A study was undertaken to highlight the impact of the herbicide diuron applied in mixture with the fungicide tebuconazole on natural periphyton during flood...

Developing new biological indicators for monitoring toxic substances is a major environmental challenge. Intensive agricultural areas are generally pesticide-dependent and generate water pollution due to transfer of pesticide residues through spray-drift, run-off and leaching. The ecological effects of these pollutants in aquatic ecosystems are bro...

Understanding the ecological status of aquatic ecosystems and the impact of anthropogenic contamination requires correlating exposure to toxicants with impact on biological communities. Several tools exist for assessing the ecotoxicity of substances, but there is still a need for new tools that are ecologically relevant and easy to use. We have dev...

The potential of microbenthic algal assemblages to recover after diuron exposure was investigated. Microbenthic algal assemblages (periphyton) were grown on glass slides in correspondence to a diuron-polluted and adiuron-free sampling site of a river. After 5 weeks of colonization, the impacted periphyton was transferred by translocating the coloni...

Pollution-induced community tolerance (PICT) concept is based on the assumption that the toxicant exerts selection pressure on the biological communities when exposure reaches a critical level for a sufficient period of time and therefore sensitive species are eliminated. However, induced tolerance of microbial biofilm communities cannot be attribu...

An experimental study was undertaken to highlight the potential ecotoxicological impact of the herbicide diuron on biofilms during flooding events in a small river (Morcille) in the Beaujolais vineyard area (France). We investigated the responses of chronically contaminated biofilms exposed to short-term pulses (3 h) of diuron. Biofilms were grown...

We investigated the environmental impact of diffuse pesticide pollution on natural river biofilms in the River Morcille, France, during 2 seasons in pristine and contaminated stations. Prokaryotic and eukaryotic community compositions were assessed by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis, while microalgal community composition was determined by...

Earthworms are "ecosystem engineers" and changes in their main activities (creation of burrows and burial of organic matter) due to pollutants can have important effects on soil functions and indirectly on other components of the soil ecosystem. Using 2D terraria, we studied the behavior of two earthworm species (the endogeic Allolobophora icterica...

Soil algae are photosynthetically active microorganisms showing changeable community structure, depending on the soil type, the agricultural practices and the application of pesticides. To characterise algal community structure, molecular approaches complementary to classical microbiological approaches based on the isolation and the culture of soil...

Soil algae are present in all kinds of soils, both arable and virgin, in large amounts and in great diversity. These photosynthetic microorganisms, which are concentrated in the top few centimeters of the soil profile, are organized in a community structure that varies depending on soil type, farming method and pesticide application. We first teste...

A study was undertaken to investigate the environmental impact of herbicides on natural communities of freshwater periphyton and phytoplankton in the river Ozanne and in related nearby water reservoirs, including both pristine and pesticide- (atrazine and isoproturon) contaminated stations. The microalgal toxicity of both herbicides was investigate...

The antifouling herbicide Irgarol 1051 has been detected in recent years in numerous estuaries, marinas, harbors and coastal areas, and in some harbors on Lake Geneva, but so far only a few studies have investigated the ecotoxicological effects of this compound on microalgae. The purpose of this study was to assess the ecotoxicological impact of Ir...

We compared the species composition in phytobenthic communities at different sampling sites in a small French river presenting polluted and unpolluted areas. For each sampling point, the total DNA was extracted and used to construct an 18S rRNA gene clone library after PCR amplification of a ca 400 bp fragment. Phytobenthic community composition wa...

Pour caractériser l'état d'un écosystème aquatique contaminé par des toxiques il est nécessaire de développer des méthodes d'évaluation des impacts écotoxicologiques, basées à la fois sur l'étude de réponses physiologiques et sur la structure des communautés vivant dans cet écosystème. La méthode PICT (Pollution-Induced Community Tolerance) proposé...

We investigated the validity and sensitivity of assessments of the induction of atrazine tolerance in freshwater outdoor mesocosmic phytoplankton communities, using the in vivo fluorescence of chlorophyll a as an endpoint, for monitoring ecotoxicology and for risk assessment programs applied to phytoplankton contaminated by photosystem II herbicide...

Irgarol 1051 is a recent herbicidal compound, inhibitor of photosynthesis, used in antifouling paints. This toxic is persistent in aquatic environments, with low abiotic and biotic degradation, highly phytotoxic, and has already been detected in estuaries and coastal areas, with suspected negative impacts on non-target organisms (aquatic plants and...

Methodologies based on physiological responses and biological community structure, such as the Pollution-Induced Community Tolerance (PICT) proposed by Blank et al 1988, are required to characterise ecosystem health. The PICT concept is based on the assumption that, when applied at a sufficient concentration for an adequate duration, a toxicant exe...

Algae communities exposed to a herbicide like atrazine (PS II inhibitor) are expected to be selected and to be more tolerant to the herbicide than unexposed communities (pollution-induced community tolerance, PICT). The PICT may be an ecotoxicological tool for detecting this selective action of chronic pollution, and this method has been applied to...

Dans le cadre d'une étude confiée par l'Agence de l'Eau Loire-Bretagne, notre équipe s'est intéressée aux effets de molécules herbicides sur les communautés de microalgues naturelles. Nous avons suivi la contamination en pesticides sur divers sites de la rivière Ozanne (Eure et Loir) et évalué la sensibilité des communautés de microalgues prélevées...

We have tested the sensitivity of phytoplankton to the herbicides atrazine and nicosulfuron in experiments conduced in increasingly complex systems, from single strain phytoplankton cultures (microplates) to mesocosms mimicking whole ecosystems. The endpoints used to assess sensitivity to atrazine and nicosulfuron were total biomass increase, photo...

Growth modifications caused by various concentrations of atrazine and nicosulfuron were monitored in closed and continuous culture of Chlorella vulgaris (chlorophyta), Navicula accommoda (diatomophyta), and Oscillatoria limnetica (cyanophyta). The concentration at which algal growth rate was reduced twofold (EC50) was determined in the three specie...

*INRA Station d'Hydrobiologie Lacustre, Thonon-Les-Bains Diffusion du document : INRA Station d'Hydrobiologie Lacustre, Thonon-Les-Bains

The responses of algae to herbicides depend on the sensitivity of each species, but competition within algal communities may be an important regulator of the effects of herbicides on aquatic systems. The impact of herbicides on algae also depends on abiotic factors like nutrients, light, and temperature. We examined the tolerance of the alga Oscill...

Atrazine is a widely used herbicide in corn cultures. As Atrazine have contaminated many aquatic ecosystems, other chemicals such as Nicosulfuron are proposed in replacement. Comparative studies of Atrazine and Nicosulforon effects on phytoplankton were performed on systems of increasing complexity: monocultures and out-door microcosms. Sensibiliti...

Natural phytoplankton assemblages from Lake Geneva were cultivated in outdoor microcosms contaminated with 10 μg/l of the PS II inhibitor herbicide, atrazine. The 12 experiments were performed in the spring and early and late summer. Physico-chemical parameters and the changes in the densities of algal species were followed. The algae in the phytop...

Nous présentons une revue bibliographique à propos des effets des herbicides inhibiteurs du Photosystème II (PS II) sur les communautés algales. Ces herbicides sont abondamment utilisés dans les pratiques phytosanitaires. Ils sont susceptibles de contaminer les milieux aquatiques et, étant donné leur mode d'action inhibitrice de la photosynthèse, i...

La méthode PICT (Pollution-Induced Community Tolerance) a été initialement proposée par Blank et al. (1988) afin de caractériser un écosystème aquatique soumis à un polluant suspecté. Le concept du PICT est fondé sur le fait qu'une communauté algale présente différents «composants» ayant une sensibilité variable vis-à-vis du xénobiotique étudié. Ai...

Pollution-Induced Community Tolerance (PICT) was first proposed by Blanck et al. (1988) as an ecotoxicological tool for use in advanced hazard assessment of toxicants. This method can be used to retrospectively detect the impact of toxicants in polluted ecosystems. PICT is based on the idea that the toxicant exerts a selection pressure when exposur...

*INRA, Station d'Hydrobiologie Lacustre Thonon-les-Bains (FRA) Diffusion du document : INRA, Station d'Hydrobiologie Lacustre Thonon-les-Bains (FRA)

*INRA, Station d'Hydrobiologie Lacustre Thonon-les-Bains (FRA) Diffusion du document : INRA, Station d'Hydrobiologie Lacustre Thonon-les-Bains (FRA)

Etude réalisée pour l'agence de l'Eau Loire-Bretagne *INRA Thonon-les-Bains Station d'Hydrobiologie Lacustre (FRA) Diffusion du document : INRA Thonon-les-Bains Station d'Hydrobiologie Lacustre (FRA)

*INRA Thonon-les-Bains Station d'Hydrobiologie Lacustre (FRA) Diffusion du document : INRA Thonon-les-Bains Station d'Hydrobiologie Lacustre (FRA)

The trophic role of bacteria in the microbial loop was examined fish pond receiving organic fertilizer. Two types of experiments were carried out : the first in situ aimed at studying the trophic pathways after the addition of a nitrogen-rich organic fertilizer ; the second in vitro aimed at defining the role of bateria in this particular aquatic e...

Résultat de l'étude suivante : après fertilisation organique, quantification des transferts rapides d'azote (dans les quinze premiers jours après fertilisation) dans les compartiments microbiens (jusqu'au zooplancton) et évaluation du rôle de ces compartiments dans la transformation de l'azote. Cinq expérimentations en enceinte ont été réalisées au...

SUMMARY The aim of this paper is to présent a review about the impact of Photo System II (PS II) inhibitors on algae communities. A brief discussion of the use in agri­ culture, the différent chemical familles, the photosynthetic inhibition effect and the occurrence of thèse compounds in aquatics Systems is followed by the présentation of the impac...

Soil algae are present in all kind of soils, cultivated or not, in large amounts and with a great diversity. These photosynthetic microorganisms, which are concentrated in the first millimeters of the surface, show a variable community structure depending on the soil types, on the agriculture practices and on the application of pesticides. It is pr...