Deadline: 28-May-2025

In agricultural ecosystems, the sunflower is a major nutritional resource for pollinators, particularly honeybees, and helps reduce their pathogens (LoCascio et al. 2019, Schmitt et al. 2021). However, the attractiveness of varieties and their melliferous capacity varies significantly (Pham-Delègue et al. 1984, Vear et al. 1990), and the genetic bases of these are almost totally unknown. It is therefore important, in addition to productivity which remains a major issue, to develop from the resistance profile of environmental pests and tolerance to abiotic stress, a concept of extended sunflower phenotype including the attractiveness and nutritional value of nectars and pollen (in particular sugar and proteins) for pollinators and to produce the genetic, physiological, and phenomic knowledge required to improve this extended phenotype.

To achieve this, you will exploit and develop the resources present at the Sunflower-Soy Biological Resources Centre to study the genetic control of attractiveness to pollinators. A wide genetic diversity enabling GWAS approaches is available in the public sunflower core collection (Mandel et al., 2011). This includes variations in sugar and nectar content, colour of ligules or depth of corolla. This collection is currently expanding thanks to the PEPR AgroDiv project and will be used to study the metabolomic composition of nectar, the depth of the florets (Prasifka et al., 2017), the colour of the ligules (Todesco et al., 2022), and the number of visits from hymenoptera, diptera and lepidoptera, main pollinators of sunflowers. Furthermore, in addition to the attractiveness, the nutritional quality of the pollen/nectar is of paramount importance. The protein content is a determining factor in the quality of the bee colony. Thus, the variability in protein content of the genetic resources will be analysed. It is known that there is high variation between species. However, the intra-specific genetic variability has not yet been assessed.

Using a functional genetics and genomics approach, you will develop the genetic material to validate the causal polymorphisms for these components of attractiveness and nutrition (if variability exists). Regarding the methodological aspects, you will participate in the development of methods of phenotyping the attractiveness traits such as the duration of flowering, pollen production, recognition by pollinators and their behaviour from images and videos in conjunction with the Phenotoul platform and in collaboration with bee specialists in Toulouse (INRAE GenPhySE, DYNAFOR, CNRS CRCA) and at national level (INRAE APIS, Environnement et Abeilles). Finally, as an extension to this work, you will participate in establishing criteria for the development of an extended sunflower phenotype including the service to pollinators within the framework of the CTPS.

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