CV Helmut MEISS

Since 2013, Dr. Helmut MEISS works as a permanent assistant professor (MCF) in agroecology at Lorraine University, Nancy, France.

Current teaching

His teaching activities at IUT Nancy-Brabois are focused on theoretical and practical introductions to a) sustainable agriculture, b) soil sciences, c) weed biology and management including botanics, and d) a variety of projects and agronomic surveys realized with student groups. He leds the DUT-BUT agronomy study program at IUT Nancy-Brabois. https://iutnb.univ-lorraine.fr/fr/page/183/Agronomie.html  

Current research

The aim of his research within the LAE-AGISEM research team is to understand and improve ecosystem services in cereal farming systems http://lae.univ-lorraine.fr/fr/lunite-agisem/controles-biologiques. Together with his colleagues F. Lasserre-Joulin, O. Therond, A. Rouabah (postdoc 2019-20), E. Stell (PhD-student 2019-22), and H. Lirot (Master student 2022) H. Meiss is interested in conservation biological control (CBC) of crop pests such as aphids by their natural enemies (various arthropod predators and parasitoid wasps) that are naturally occurring in agroecosystems. We combine experimental and modeling approaches. The goal is to contribute to the development of knowledge and decisions support systems useful for improving CBC in cereal farming systems. A better understanding und prediction of the temporal dynamics of these interactions will be useful for strongly reducing or suppressing the use of insecticides by farmers. Our knowledge is still limited concerning the drivers of CBC including i) temperature, humidity, and other dynamic whether parameters varying within and between years, ii) the landscape composition and spatial configuration around the fields and iii) the various cropping systems and practices and their temporal succession on the local field and in neighboring fields in the landscape. They may all influence the spatio-temporal population dynamics of crop pests and of their natural enemies, and thus the potentially regulating effects caused by their interactions. http://lae.univ-lorraine.fr/fr/membre/helmut-meiss-0

Education and past research

Helmut Meiss obtained a PhD in 2010 conjointly at Burgundy University/INRAE Dijon, France and Gießen University, Germany. During his PhD and post-doc, he worked on cultural and biological weed management (crop rotation, weed seed predation by natural enemies, crop-weed competition, plant regrowth after cutting of temporary grasslands, soil tillage).

During his master 2 (2006, INRAE Dijon), he analyzed the fitness cost of an herbicide resistance (caused by a point mutation) and the genetic basis of the phenotypic reduction of these costs using Arabidopsis thaliana and thus got research experiences in evolutionary ecology and genomics.

During his master 1 (2005, INRAE Dijon), he analyzed the seed bank ecology of an invasive annual plant species, Ambrosia artemisiifolia.