Patrick Brown is a professor of Plant Sciences in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Davis (USA). Dr. Brown’s research focuses on function and transport of nutrients in plants and the management of nutrients in agricultural ecosystems. Dr. Brown is a highly cited researcher whose contributions include the identification of nickel as an essential element for plants, critical contributions to the understanding of the function, uptake and transport of boron in plants, identification of mechanisms of plant tolerance to heavy metals in the environment and on the mechanisms of action of foliar fertilizers. Dr. Brown has served as chairman and executive committee member of the International Plant Nutrition Colloquium, as co-chairman of the 1st and 2nd International Congress on Biostimulants in Agriculture and has held numerous leadership roles at the University of California, Davis and in state, national and international committees and panels.

Patrick du Jardin (PdJ) is professor and head of the Plant Biology Laboratory at Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech - University of Liège (Belgium). He was dean of faculty between 2007 and 2009. He is an active teacher in plant biology and his current research is focused on biological interactions between plants roots and their soil environment, mediated by volatile and non volatile allelochemical compounds, and on the modes of action of microbial and non microbial biostimulants in crop plants. As a consultant for the European Commission, PdJ issued two reports on biostimulants in 2012 and 2014, in the framework of a future EC fertilisers regulation. PdJ has a long-standing expertise on the risk assessment of agricultural technologies as external expert for the European Food Safety Authority. He is also a member of the ethical committees of the French Institutes INRA and Cirad, where expert advice is provided on the ethics of agricultural innovation.

Researches: on plant-microbe symbioses and nitrogen fixation. Teaching: on microbiomes, symbiotic associations, and plant biotechnology. Jean-Michel seeks to understand the molecular mechanisms controlling the establishment of symbioses between plants and microbes, nitrogen fixation and the stimulation of plant growth by microbes in order to improve the use of these associations in agriculture.