Luc de Lapeyre de Bellaire, Cirad, France

Luc de Lapeyre de Bellaire is a plant pathologist and has been working on fungal diseases of bananas for 35 years in the French West Indies, Latin America, and Africa. His main research topics are dedicated to agroecological protection of Sigatoka leaf spot diseases and to postharvest diseases of bananas (anthracnose and crown rot). Deeply convinced that a better understanding of epidemiological processes is the key to design alternative strategies to chemical control, he has dedicated his carrier to a holistic understanding of these processes in banana agrosystems in order to explore pioneering pesticide-free management strategies. He is presently the head of GECO, the Research Unit of Cirad (Montpellier, France) which is dedicated to ecological functioning and sustainable management of banana and pineapple agrosystems. He is author/co-author of more than 50 publications in international scientific indexed journals.