Professor in Data Science for Agronomy and Agri-Food

Teaching activities

My teaching mainly concerns data science, applied statistics and the use of R at different levels and for different audiences: the "Mediterranean and Tropical department" at the Institut Agro - Montpellier (engineer level), the 3A master's degree, specialisations in the 3^e engineer year (Plant Improvement, Data Science, Sustainable Plant Production, Breeding) and more specific courses in English, such as the European Vinifera master's degree and the Data Manager course.

Research activities

My research concerns the modelling of population dynamics and agronomic production, and taking into account sources of error and variability (EDS, Bayesian, mixed models). This implies taking into account a particular type of data: the curve or trajectory of a process. This type of object involves working on high-dimensional data, possibly from sensors. In this context, I have developed partnerships for UMR MISTEA in large-scale agronomic projects and have helped to set up several projects (internal, labex Numev, FUI, etc.). I have published in the fields of statistics, computer science, ecology and agronomy (2 articles published in peer-reviewed journals, 1 book chapter, 3 R packages). The intersection of these disciplines defines the emerging field of data science, digital agronomy. I have already co-supervised 3 post-doctorates and 6 theses on data science issues in digital agronomy (or ecology), including 1 CIFRE grant.

Publications and productions

Teaching publications available online

For the Agro labex project "Open and Distance Learning for Plant Breeding": setting up self-assessment exercises in statistics for entry to the M1 in plant breeding. https://www.supagro.fr/EviDAP/

Materials created in English for the European OpenSpat project (spatial statistics with R): book chapter (produced with knitr -Rstudio) and video of an introductory course on spatial statistics with R. http://www.openspat.eu/

Book (ebook, html) containing the statistics courses for the specialisation in sustainable crop production https://agrodatascience.pages.mia.inra.fr/book/

Tutorials for learning R on an RShiny server, deployed on a server at my UMR (http://147.100.179.112:3838/team/bfontez/).

Research publications

1. B. Fontez, P. Loisel, T. Simonneau, N. Hilgert. (2024) An exploratory penalized regression to identify combined effects of functional variables -Application to agri-environmental issues. Biometrics, 80, no 4, https://doi.org/10.1093/biomtc/ujae134
2. S. Vrignon-Brenas, B. Fontez, D. Caboulet, G. Ruetsch, O. Demarle, A. Metay, A. Pellegrino, (2024) How to combine soil and plant indicators to manage nitrogen fertilisation in vineyards? Heliyon, 10, no 21, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e40099
3. Cloez, Bertrand, Fontez, Bénédicte, González-García, Eliel and Sanchez, Isabelle. (2024) "Kalman filter with impulse noised outliers: a robust sequential algorithm to filter data with a large number of outliers" The International Journal of Biostatistics, 20, no 2, https://doi.org/10.1515/ijb-2023-0065
4. Alice Argentero, Soline Caillé, Floriano Joaquim Engenheiro, Bénédicte Fontez, Peggy Rigou, Laetitia Mouls (2024). Exploring red wine typicity of Corbières: evaluation of impact of winemaking process on the chemical composition and organoleptic properties of wines from different terroirs. OENO One, 58, no 3, https://oeno-one.eu/article/view/7921 , https://doi.org/10.20870/oeno-one.2024.58.3.7921
5. Wilhelm de Almeida L., Pellegrino A., Fontez B., Torregrosa L. and Ojeda H. (2024) New fungus disease-tolerant grapevine varieties response to drought under a semi-arid climate. Exploring red wine typicity of Corbières: evaluation of impact of winemaking process on the chemical composition and organoleptic properties of wines from different terroirsOenoOne.
6. Wilhelm de Almeida, L., Pellegrino, A., Fontez, B., Torregrosa, L., & Ojeda, H. (2023). Short and long-term acclimation to water status at leaf and plant level of fungus-tolerant genotypes: This article is published in cooperation with the 22nd GiESCO International Meeting, hosted by Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, July 17-21, 2023. OENO One, 57(2), 203–218. https://doi.org/10.20870/oeno-one.2023.57.2.7431
7. Guzmán Penella, Santiago, Renaud Boulanger, Isabelle Maraval, Gabi Kopp, Marcello Corno, Bénédicte Fontez, and Angélique Fontana. (2023). "Link between Flavor Perception and Volatile Compound Composition of Dark Chocolates Derived from Trinitario Cocoa Beans from Dominican Republic" Molecules 28, no. 9: 3805. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules28093805   
8. B Cloez, T Daufresne, M Kerioui,B. Fontez (2023) A bayesian version of Galton-Watson for population growth and its use in the management of small population. MathematicS In Action, 12, no 1, https://doi.org/10.5802/msia.31
9. Sylvain Vrignon-Brenas, Bénédicte Fontez, Anne Bisson, Gaelle Rolland, Jérôme Chopard, Damien Fumey, Aurélie Metay, Anne Pellegrino. (2021) Combining pluriannual dynamics and Bayesian approach to analyze grapevine growth and storage as a function of nitrogen supply, Journal of Experimental Botany, October 2021; https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erab469
10. Gouyo T., Mestres C., Maraval I., Fontez B., Hofleitner C., Bohuon P. (2020) Assessment of acoustic-mechanical measurements for texture of French fries: Comparison of deep-fat frying and air frying. Food Research International, Volume 131, May 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodres.2019.108947
11. Meguelati K., Fontez B., Hilgert N., Masseglia F.  and Sanchez I. (2020) Massively Distributed Clustering via Dirichlet Process Mixture. ECML-PKDD 2020 - The European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases 2020, Septembre 2020, Ghent, Belgique. Paper Track Demonstration.
12.  Meguelati, K., Fontez, B., Hilgert, N., Masseglia, F. (2019) High Dimensional Data Clustering by means of Distributed Dirichlet Process Mixture Models. IEEE Big Data 2019 - IEEE International Conference on Big Data, Dec 2019, Los-Angeles, United States. ⟨lirmm-02364411⟩
13. Meguelati K., Fontez B., Hilgert N., Masseglia F. (2019) Dirichlet Process Mixture Models made Scalable and Effective by means of Massive Distribution. SAC 2019 - 34th Symposium On Applied Computing, Apr 2019, Limassol, Cyprus. pp.502-509, ⟨10.1145/3297280.3297327⟩. ⟨hal-01999453⟩
14. Sirakov, N., Fontez, B., Libourel, T., Dos Santos, A., Mitja, D., Loisel P. (2019) A stage structured hierarchical Bayes model for the babassu palm tree population dynamics Estimated from anthropogenic open area data sets. Ecological Modelling, 400: 14-26
15. Vagne C., David J., Tavaud M., Fontez B. (2015) Reciprocal sign epistasis and truncation selection: when is recombination favorable in a pre-breeding program with a selfing species? Journal of Theoretical Biology, 386: 44-54
16. Fontez B., Cavalli L. (2014) Bayesian hierarchical model used to analyze regression between fish body size and scale size: application to rare fish species Zingel asper. Knowledge and management of aquatic ecosystem, 413, 10.
17. Juery D., Abraham C., Fontez B. (2014) Unsupervised bayesian clustering for functional data. Journal de la société française de statistique, 155(2): 185-201.
18. Affholder M-C., Prudent P., Masotti V., Coulomb B., Rabier J., Nguyen-The B., Laffont-Schwob I. (2013) Transfer of metals and metalloids from soil to shoots in wild rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis L.) growing on a former lead smelter site: Human exposure risk. Science of the Total Environment 454-455 pp. 219–229.
19. Dorisca S., Durrieu de madron L., Fontez B., Giraud A., Riera B. (2011). Établissement d’équations entre le diamètre et le volume total de bois des arbres, adaptées au Cameroun. Bois et forêts des tropiques, 308 (2), pp. 87-95.
20. Durbec M., Nguyen The B., Grey J., Harrod C., Stolzenberg N., Chappaz R., Cavalli L. (2010). Biological influences on inter- and intraspecific isotopic variability among paired chondrostome fishes. Comptes Rendus Biologies, 333 (8), pp. 613-621. doi:10.1016/j.crvi.2010.05.002
21. Durbec M., Cavalli L., Grey J., Chappaz  R. & Nguyen The B. (2010). The use of stable isotopes to trace small scale movements by two Cyprinid fish species (Leuciscus souffia and Alburnoides bipunctatus) in the Durance river (France S.E.). Hydrobiologia DOI 10.1007/s10750-009-0051-z.
22. Stolzenberg N, Nguyen The B, Salducci M.D., Cavalli L. (2009). Influence of environment and mitochondrial heritage on the ecological characteristics of fish in a hybrid zone. PLoS ONE 4(6): e5962. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005962.
23. Rifflart R., Carrel G., Le Coarer Y. et Nguyen The B. (2009). Spatio-temporal patterns of fish assemblages in a large regulated alluvial river. Freshwater Biology 54: 1544-1559.
24. Lailler R., Sanaa M., Chadoeuf J., Fontez B., Brisabois A., Colmin C, Millemann Y. (2005). Prevalence of multidrug resistant (MDR) Salmonella in bovine dairy herds in western France. Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 70 (3-4), pp 177-189.
25. Ducharme GR. et Fontez B. (2004). A smooth test of goodness-of-fit for growth curves and monotonic nonlinear regression models. Biometrics, 60 (4), pp. 977-986.
26. Fontez B. et Ducharme G. (2004). Test d’adéquation en régression non-linéaire, cas des fonctions monotones. Compte-rendu de l’Académie des Sciences, Série I, 338, pp 317-320.
27. Durrieu de Madron L., Fontez B., Dipapoundji B. (2000). Dégâts d’exploitation et de débardage en fonction de l’intensité de l’exploitation en forêt dense humide d’Afrique centrale. Bois et forêts des tropiques, N°264 (2), pp 57-60.