The 12th Congress of the Francophone Association of Microbial Ecology

After 11 editions organised by our colleagues from universities and national research organisations, the Agroecology Joint Research Unit (INRAE, Institut Agro Dijon and University of Burgundy Europe) is honoured to organise the 12th edition of the Association Francophone d'Ecologie Microbienne (AFEM) conference, which will take place from 18 to 21 November 2025 in Beaune (Burgundy-Franche-Comté). This 12th edition will be the first in Bourgogne Franche-Comté, in the heart of the Climats de Bourgogne. (https://premc.org/afem/prochain-colloque-de-lafem/).

The AFEM conference is international and French-speaking: its aim is to bring together microbial ecologists interested in different environments (aquatic, terrestrial, food) and different areas of life (bacteria and/or archaea and/or micro-eukaryotes, and their associated viruses) to exchange ideas, tools, approaches, results and theories between microbial ecologists in order to initiate or strengthen scientific collaborations. This event aims to cover environmental microbial ecology from environmental genomics to direct or developing applications.

This four-day conference has been held every two years since 2003. The event generally brings together between 150 and 200 researchers, permanent staff and students from various national research organisations (INRAE, CNRS, IRD and CIRAD), universities and private companies. Researchers recognised by their peers are invited to present introductory lectures for the sessions in the form of scientific summaries. This conference is an opportunity for young researchers (Master's, PhD and post-doctoral students) to present their work in the form of oral presentations or posters.

The aim of this conference is to present and discuss recent results obtained through various multidisciplinary and complementary approaches combining, for example, cultivation, environmental genomics ‘omics’ tools (metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metaproteomics, metabolomics), biogeochemistry, ecotoxicology and ecophysiology. Different scales and organisms will be addressed, from molecules to the ecology of ecosystems and territories.

For this twelfth edition, we are considering the following provisional programme:

• Session 1: Ecology of microbial communities in ecosystems
• Session 2: Microbiota-host and microbiota-microbiota interactions
• Session 3: Microbiota, ecological function and ecosystem services
• Session 4: Ecology of disturbances: microbiota, anthropocene and climate change
• Session 5: Microbial biotechnologies for ecosystem sustainability

Each of the five sessions will last half a day and will consist of oral presentations or posters on recent work in the relevant fields. Each session will be introduced by a guest speaker.

In addition to this scientific programme, a scientific outreach event open to the general public will be organised on one of the evenings of the conference on the theme of the importance of microbiota for vines and wine in the Burgundy climate, with contributions from renowned figures in the Burgundy wine industry.