Thomas Breniere, Inrae, France

Thomas Breniere graduated in 2020 as an engineer in bioinformatics and modelling. In 2018, Thomas contributed to preliminary works on tomato and pepper plant/root-knot nematode interactions at INRAE, Sophia-Antipolis. In his final year internship in 2019, he challenged soil water estimates from simulation outputs on maize fields across Europe to databases issued by a network of soil probes or by satellite agencies at Limagrain, Chappes. Concerned about upcoming challenges regarding water quality and scarcity and curious about sustainable food systems, Thomas participates as a Ph.D. student at Avignon University in partnership with two INRAE labs involved all along the food chain.

More precisely, his research topic focuses on tomato and goji (wolfberry) fruit carotenoid content under soil water deficit and cardiovascular health effects of dry fruit powder supplementation.

While the impact of soil drought on tomato carotenoid content has been partially investigated, little data is available on the kinetics of fruit carotenoid content. To what extent can pre-maturation processes like cell division and expansion processes in the green fruit participate in fruit final carotenoid content ?