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- 63 years old
- married, 2 daughters
- research director, executive chairman of Génoplante, the French plant genomics consortium
- agronomist, PhD at the Université d'Orsay
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Georges Pelletier
A major contribution to our knowledge of plants and their breeding
(08/06/2006)
As Director of Research in Plant Genetics, between 1991 and 1999 Georges Pelletier headed the Plant Breeding and Genetics Unit at the Versailles INRA Centre. He then contributed to developing the French plant genomics consortium, Génoplante, of which he is currently the Executive Chairman of the Management Board.
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Georges Pelletier discovered and became fascinated by research in plant genetics during his studies at the National Agronomics Institute at Paris-Grignon. His entire career thereafter has been devoted to this research field: with his diploma in agronomic engineering and advanced studies in genetics and physiology, he joined INRA where he completed his doctoral thesis. He was responsible for several pioneering studies which advanced our fundamental knowledge and generated practical applications. In 1999, before taking up his post as Executive Chairman of Génoplante, he returned for two years to working on the lab bench. "A rebirth", he admits. "Management functions deprive us of a pleasure and distance us from the reality of work in the laboratory, although it is true that we have to confront other realities."
Executive Chairman of Génoplante, a driving force behind plant research in France
In practice, Génoplante, the national plant genomics programme, involves nearly 400 researchers working in public-sector institutions, seed companies and plant biotechnology organisations. This structure enables the sharing and appropriation by geneticists of advances in molecular genetics, and an opportunity for researchers in fundamental science to be confronted by the practical problems of industry. "We must applaud those in the Ministry for Research, in agencies and in companies, who sustained their efforts and made this major French plant biology project possible", emphasises Georges Pelletier. In this structure, which functions on the basis of theme committees, and "where almost all actors are both examiners and examinees, everyone feels responsible for the satisfactory running of the whole, so that we can say that a true scientific community has grown up around a core of genomics". Since 1999, Génoplante has made an internationally recognised contribution to knowledge on the genomes of maize, wheat, rapeseed, rice and Arabidopsis, in particular. "Mission-oriented research has two main pillars: the economic world and the academic world. At present, the involvement of economic actors in the field of plant biotechnologies is weakening in France: companies are withdrawing or reducing their investments. The total number of Génoplante projects declined markedly in 2004-2005 because of a lack of sufficient incentive funding. In the future, public sector research will only be strong if it continues to have socioeconomic prospects. If it can no longer be assured of this support, particularly through the exploitation of biotechnologies by industry, French plant biology, in the broadest sense, will suffer."
A career punctuated by major discoveries
The most recent experimental work by Georges Pelletier gave rise to a tool which is widely employed by Génoplante: a collection of Arabidopsis insertion mutants which allow the simple molecular identification of mutated genes. As early as the 1980s, Georges Pelletier was able to perceive the usefulness of this small plant of no agronomic value, which would later become the international model for flowering plants. Numerous laboratories throughout the world were trying to develop the mutant collections which would enable study of the genome of this plant, but the mutagenesis methods used were not very efficient. Georges Pelletier and his engineer developed a novel method which is now used throughout the world (the corresponding publication is the most cited in the field) so that today, several mutants exist for practically all of the 30,000 genes in the species.
Other major advances punctuated Georges Pelletier's scientific career, mainly devoted to studying plant reproduction. Between 1976 and 1990, he dissected the genetic determinism of cytoplasmic male sterility (the role of mitochondria and additional genes in their genome). This success was achieved by means of veritable technical revolutions (at that time) in the area of in vitro cell culture, such as mastery of the fusion of protoplasts (plant cells devoid of a cell wall) and the culture of fusion products leading to the regeneration of whole plants, first in tobacco and then in rapeseed or other types of Brassica.
Very early in his career, Georges Pelletier was the first to breed haploid plants by cultivating asparagus pollen, i.e. plants whose genome consisted of a single batch of chromosomes, even though only a few preliminary results had been obtained in tobacco and rice. "Impossible in asparagus" they said…. Through chromosomal duplication, male asparagus haploids made it possible to breed "super male" individuals which, when crossed with females, produced progeny which were all male, homogeneous and more productive. This work has since been developed by teams working in the in vitro culture and breeding laboratory for this species at INRA in Versailles.
From risk-taking to the consecration…
During this original career, Georges Pelletier has been able to choose his subjects, areas which were practically untouched and that no project evaluation committees (as they function today) would have retained… His colleagues are unanimous in applauding the originality of his approach, and have appreciated his support when targeting innovative options. This eclectic researcher is also interested in the history of science and in music, and has a predilection for manual work.
His work has been rewarded by the Jean Dufrenoy Prize from the Académie d'Agriculture de France (1986), the Doistaut-Blutet Prize from the Académie des Sciences (1989), and the Friendship Prize for the Great Wall of China and Beijing City (2001). He is a Chevalier of the French Order of Merit, and was elected to the Académie des Sciences in 2004. In 2006, he was the first researcher to be distinguished by the INRA Agricultural Research Award, attributed by an international jury for his work as a whole and for a career as an internationally renowned researcher who has made an exceptional contribution to the influence of agricultural research.
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Written by :
Communications Department
Date of creation : 04/08/2006
Date of last update : 08/08/2006
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