Ecole Nationale Nantes-Atlantique Veterinaires, Agroalimentaire et e l'Alimentation (Oniris)

http://www.oniris-nantes.fr

The Ecole Nationale Nantes-Atlantique Veterinaires, Agroalimentaire et e l'Alimentation was created in 2010 by merging two National school., and has over 600 vetinary and 300 engineering students. The bioencapsulation group is part of GEPEA a research unit of a French National Council for Scientific Research. The Bioencapsulation group at Oniris is headed by Professor Denis Poncelet, who is a leading international researcher in the field of bioencapsulation. He is President of the Bioencapsulation Research Group, which is an international association for bioencapsulation (http://bioencapsulation.net).

The research group at Oniris has expertise on a number of techniques, including spray drying, spray coating, dropping technologies, including ionic and thermal gelation or interfacial coacervation, and emulsification methods, for a wide variety of industrial applications. Within the MicroNfix project, Oniris has successfully developed an encapsulation technique for PGPR using alginate gelification, which will be tested with further strains and on a larger scale to understand how encapsulation can assist with colonisation by PGPR of the rhizosphere. Large scale production of encapsulated inocula will be achieved through collaboration with Institute Meurice in Brussels.