TERRA Innovation Game (2017)

On Wednesday 24 May 2017, the Terra Teaching and Research Centre and the Faculty of Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech (University of Liège) organised the 2nd TERRA Day entitled "TERRA INNOVATION GAME".

n Wednesday 24 May 2017, the Terra Teaching and Research Centre and the Faculty of Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech (University of Liège) organised the 2nd TERRA Day entitled "TERRA INNOVATION GAME".

The day was organized in the form of a rally-competition through the various laboratories of the Research Unit.

12 laboratories were to be discovered :

1 - How to produce plant with fishes...and to protect them ?

Aquaponics is a production system used in urban agriculture, which combines recirculated aquaculture and hydroponic culture of plants. This kind of system is more and more studied but one critical point in its management is always neglected: how to manage plant pathogens. The combined presence of plants, fishes and bacteria indeed limits the use of curative products like pesticides or chemical disinfectants. This is why the development of biological control methods is essential. The team of the Urban and Integrated Plant Pathology Laboratory will show you its different research topics including urban agriculture and biopesticides development.

2 - From potatoes to active molecules

The « Chimie Générale et Organique » and « Biophysique Moléculaire aux Interfaces » labs have specialized in the study of plant defence mechanisms. Indeed, higher plants produce molecules involved in their protection against pests and pathogens, called oxylipins. The study of these molecules is essential for understanding these defence mechanisms but also to improve current methods for biological control. During the first hotspot, you will learn how oxylipins are extracted, purified and characterized from potatoes. Then, the second hotspot will show you the tools to study the biological (membrane) activities of these molecules and so their functions in the plant.

3 - Molecular dialogue of soil microorganisms

The soil is one of the richest ecosystems in terms of diversity in microbial species. Among these microbes, certain root-associated bacteria are capable of protecting their host plant against phytopathogens via the production of multiple antimicrobial compounds. This phenomenon is far from passive and we propose to illustrate how to identify these antibiotics and how to show that their synthesis can be stimulated following some interspecies molecular crosstalk occuring between microbial protagonists sharing this ecological niche.

4 - An anticancer molecule stemming from a plant root produced in a bioreactor

Secondary metabolites produced by plants or their symbionts have already shown specific properties: anticancer, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antifungal effects, etc. Astin C is a non-ribosomal peptide (secondary metabolite) produced by the fungus Villosirosea asteris, endosymbiont of the medicinal plant Aster tataricus, which has shown an interesting anticancer activity. The current challenge is the production of the molecule on a large scale and in higher quantities, either from the original fungus through fermentation technologies, or by a heterologous yeast strain having integrated the genes involved in the astin C biosynthesis pathway. The purpose of this workshop is to highlight the implementation possibilities of a strain producing a metabolite of interest.

5 - Soil Science : from field expertise to application

« Water-Soil-Plant Exchange » Research Axis is pleased to invite you to its spot, « Soil Sciences: from field expertise to the application.” Considered as a complex bio-physicochemical reactor located in the midst of the critical zone, soil is an exciting research topic that is fundamental for future challenges. Its survey, pedology, is a field expertise science that must always be combined with more complex scientific questions in order to understand the whole system. Therefore, we propose the description of a soil profile followed by a runoff simulator demonstration to test the effectiveness of an anti-erosive filter barrier.

6 - The wheat crop breathing under high-level monitoring

The Lonzée Terrestrial Observatory (LTO) is one of the rare sites from the European network “Integrated Carbon Observation System” (ICOS) to measure gas exchanges between the atmosphere and a crop (rotation of winter wheats, sugar beets and potatoes). Fluxes of CO2, water vapor and N2O are measured continuously according to the eddy covariance method. Their long-term monitoring enables to better understand the mechanisms and dynamics of the exchanges of these greenhouse gases and to study the impact of crop management on these exchanges.

7 - Pest insects : which alternatives to pesticides ?

The laboratory of Functional and Evolutionary Entomology focuses its teaching and research activities on fundamental and applied entomology, with particular interest to the development of innovative strategies to control insect pests for agricultural productions.

We invite you to discover a part of these insect species, including some exotic and invasive ones. We will present their host plants and explain how our techniques allow us to develop sustainable pest management strategies.

8 - The canopy of tropical forests

The “TERRA – Central African Forests” group studies the dynamics and changes in forest socio-ecosystems in Central Africa. During the TERRA INNOVATION GAME day, we will present some innovative tools used to study a relatively unknown habitat: the canopy of tropical trees! PhD students will present a variety of studies, ranging from the determination of pollinators by trapping methods at the top of flowering trees to the measurement of crown biomass using terrestrial LIDAR. We will then reach up the sky with the drones, useful in measurements of allometry and in the study of the landscape.

The following devices will be presented :

tree climbing equipment (demonstration in the faculty park);
camera-traps (used for the identification of pollinators and seed dispersers);
terrestrial LIDAR (use in 3D modeling of tropical trees);
drone (used in allometry calculation, molecules trapping and study of tropical forests at landscape scale).

Images, videos and didactic posters illustrating research projects will be presented.

9 - Biostimulants and plant growth promotion: how do they shape Root System Architecture and enhance plant metabolism?

Microbial bioprocesses are of critical importance for a future sustainable biotech industry. The efficience of such processes relies on the behaviour of microbial cell factories. These cell factories are engineering for different industrial purposes, such as the synthesis of therapeutic proteins or the degradation of complex substrates. However, these cell factories are noisy and are able to respond to numerous environmental stimuli, including to that found in engineered environment, i.e. bioreactors. It is thus of critical importance to characterize this noisy behaviour for setting up more efficient bioprocesses. The purpose of the experiments will be to set-up adequate single cell technologies for demonstrating the occurrence of biological noise in bioprocesses.

10 - Microbial cell factories for a sustainable biotech industry

11 - Secondary metabolites extraction from various plant resources

The laboratory of Biomass and Green Technologies is specialized in lignocellulosic biorefining which is the fractionation and use of each part of plant resources. Most of the time, the separated fractions are hemicelluloses, cellulose and lignin but a prior extraction of secondary metabolites in the biorefining process allows to recover an additional high value fraction for cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. During this workshop, you will have the opportunity to extract these secondary metabolites from various plant resources. Our laboratory main activities will also be presented.

12 - 3D printing Chocolate, the Food 4.0 made in Belgium !

The Smart Gastronomy Lab is a Living Lab, a structure of co-creation, prototyping and use test. The main characteristic of a Living Lab is to put the user at the center of the innovation process by involving him in each step of a project development and he thus participate to build up the food of Tomorrow. In order to answer the best this issu, the SGL also mobilize a community of experts as wide as multidisciplinary : chefs, designers, economist, makers, physicians, developers, craftsmen, nutritionists… who participate to the creative process.
The Laboratory in Gastronomic Science initiate and develop the research, pure and applied, linked to the transformation, production and consumption of food/nutrients such as 3D printing, UV and IR laser engraving, the « Internet of Food », the use of connected objects to observe uses, Hippocratonomie…
During this workshop, you will enter the era of the Food 4.0 with the technology of 3D printing of chocolate and laser engraving of food…

updated on 4/10/18