The industrial transformation of olefins by homogeneous catalysis in the “oxo” process leads to multicomponent reaction mixtures. Their current separation by distillation, quite energy consuming, might be replaced in the chemical factory of the future by organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN) cascades with equivalent performances. CYRANO aims at the development of a simulation tool to assist the design of the most relevant cascade architecture to reach a given objective. The approach is universal aiming at secure the industrial scale-up: (i) acquisition of experimental single-stage filtration results to feed the simulation, (ii) systematic design and evaluation of cascades with internal fluid recirculation, (iii) simulation/experiment confrontation with 2 “cascade pilots” at different scales to validate the robustness of the selected approach, (iv) integration of the cascades into the overall process, (v) environmental impact assessment (LCA).

Multicriteria assessment of agrifood systems is essential to improve sustainability of food value chains. To perform such assessment, collection and management of data on the whole range of agrifood system activities are of primary importance. There is a real need of tools to structure, store and share data related to the transformation of agricultural products into food, domain currently poorly documented. With this purpose, three different and complementary approaches have been developed by the largest research institute in agriculture, food and environment: MEANS platform, which provides tools and database for Life Cycle Assessment practitioners; BaGaTel database, structured by PO² ontology, which contains data about transformation processes and food products; @Web, which is a web application which allows the management of data tables using semantic web languages. The aim of DataSusFood project is to develop an interoperable system taking advantage of these different approaches to deliver open access data in accordance with FAIR principles. Developments of adequate software, modules, scripts for interoperability (WP1), data entry (WP2) and data accessibility (WP3) will be performed in close collaboration between computer scientists and users. Three use cases will support the project: production of cheese, industrial dairy protein powders and food packaging. Tools and open access data delivered by DataSusFood project will be highly valuable for scientists, technical institutes, industries and governmental agencies dealing with open access data issues and/or sustainability goals related to agrifood systems.

MILKQUA project will enhance milk and dairy food quality and safety, and lower milk-associated health hazards, by reducing antimicrobial use on Tunisian farms in the context of One Health approach. Milk safety and quality are essential to the health and welfare of a community. Yet, milk also provides one of the main vehicles of food-borne diseases and antibiotic resistance. Therefore, MILKQUA will: -Deliver an extension-based national milk program (QMP) to reduce the incidence of mastitis, and the consequent use of antibiotics. -Explore the use of essential oils and plant extracts with antibacterial activities in diets of dairy cows to decrease the burden of mastitis, and increase feed efficiency, animal welfare and sustainability of milk production system. -Improve the quality, including the shelf life of dairy products. MILKQUA is a cross-multidisciplinary project engaging 5 EU partners from 4 countries (France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal). It will team with 5 Tunisian partners including livestock organization, academic and research institutions and dairy companies, with a high expertise in both fundamental and applied science, and will strongly rely on up-to-date system biology (both in vitro and in vivo assays) and OMICs methodologies. Synergy in communication and dissemination by the several Tunisian stakeholders will permit to reduce and monitor antimicrobial usage in livestock and improve both milk quality and quantity. MILKQUA will enhance the role of Tunisian dairy producers, as economic and environmental actors of the rural communities as purveyors of a sustainable food supply to consumers. MILKQUA will also lay the foundation of an accountable and dynamic system that will stimulate the economy to grow and promote prosperous and resilient communities across the country and elsewhere, providing new knowledge about the biological effects of natural compound that will be extended to other Mediterranean basin countries.

The overall goal of this project is to help improving the efficiency and sustainability of the egg production sector. The approach consists in extending the laying cycle up to 90 weeks from 60-70 weeks currently and improving hen feed efficiency (FE) and laying rate at these advanced ages, all while maintaining good egg quality, both on the nutritional and food safety plans. Eggs are a valuable and cheap source of nutrients for human alimentation all over the world. Their production is steadily increasing worldwide. Extending the laying cycle will ensure sustainability of the sector: i) economically, by reducing the per-egg cost, ii) socially, by reducing the flocks size, their turnover and the number of one-day males killed, iii) environmentally, by reducing the feed inputs. However, the current understanding of the genetic basis of egg productions at these advanced ages is scarce if anything, since almost all the studies are conducted around 30 to 60 weeks. Hence, this project aims at (a) providing a comprehensive view of the genetic basis of the laying rate, feed efficiency and egg quality in layers at a production stage never studied before (90 weeks of age) and (b) evaluating the age effect (60 weeks versus 90 weeks) on this genetic architecture and on the cis-regulation of gene expression in liver at the adult stage in relation to liver-related trait QTL refining. The egg quality will be studied under both the nutritional (yolk lipid quantity and composition) and the food safety (antimicrobial ability of the white against Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis, a bacterium of great concern in food safety) aspects. The project is organized in two Parts and 6 working tasks (WT), in addition to a management / dissemination WT). Part 1 (4 tasks) is aimed at gaining genetic knowledge on all the traits of interest at an advanced age. To this end, we will estimate the genetic parameters and map by GWAS the QTL regions for FE and egg rate (WT1), egg nutritional traits (WT3) and antimicrobial ability (WT4). We will also develop a genomic evaluation of FE, trait very costly to measure (WT2). Part 2 (2 tasks) is dedicated at going further into the QTL region characterization, an endeavor known to be challenging. First, in WT5, we will gain knowledge on gene expression regulation in adult liver and its variation between 60 and 90 weeks by detecting cis-eQTLs and new regulatory regions, using cutting-edge genomic methods (ATAC-, ChIP-, DNA-, RNA-seq, RRBS). In particular, we will be able to study a class of regulatory genes, called long noncoding RNA genes (LNC) using a genome annotation enriched in LNC that we recently generated. This task should facilitate the identification of causative genes and perhaps variants (SNPs or INDEL), underlying QTL, notably those related to the egg nutritional quality (in particular lipid content), since the liver is the tissue where egg yolk’s lipids and proteins synthesis takes place. Finally, in WT6 we will prioritize a few regions highlighted in WT5, that we will select for being involved in a trait of interest, affected by the age, and with an effect observable in cell lines for molecular biology validations. From a practical viewpoint, this project will contribute to identify new targeted selection criteria for strategical traits such as FE, egg laying rate, egg nutritional quality and egg safety. From an academic viewpoint, it will contribute to provide a cis-regulation map of gene expression in adult liver and its variation between 60 and 90 weeks, and to identify causative genes and variants controlling QTL detected in Part 1, with a particular attention to yolk lipid related traits. The consortium is composed of 5 INRAE groups specialized in chicken genetics, genomics, bioinformatics, feed efficiency, food quality and security, one French international chicken breeding company and one platform specialized in lipidomic, thus gathering the expertise required for this project.