Antoine Kremer

Antoine Kremer is a French forest geneticist and researcher. Since 2018, he has been Research Director Emeritus at UMR BIOGECO, a joint research unit of INRAE and the University of Bordeaux. His research focuses on forest genetics , evolutionary biology , genetic diversity and adaptation in forest trees , particularly European oaks. He is the recipient of Marcus Wallenberg Prize and appointed Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.

Education and academic career Kremer graduated as a forestry engineer from the École Nationale des Ingénieurs des Techniques Forestières in 1976. He subsequently completed a doctorate in quantitative genetics at the University of Paris-Sud, Orsay in 1992, and obtained an habilitation à diriger des recherches in population genetics from the same university (1995).

Kremer joined INRA in Bordeaux as a research assistant in 1977 and became a research scientist in 1982. In 1988, he was appointed research director at INRA. He later became research director emeritus at the BIOGECO joint research unit, a research unit operated by INRAE and the University of Bordeaux.

He directed the Institut Français de la Biodiversité (IFB) in Paris, serving as its first director from 1999 to 2000.

In 2011, he became co-director of the COTE research cluster. He has also held advisory and scientific positions with international research organizations and programmes concerned with forest genetics and genomics.

Research Kremer's research has focused on the genetic diversity, evolution and adaptation of forest trees, particularly European oaks. His work combines population genetics, quantitative genetics, evolutionary biology and genomics to study genetic variation, gene flow, hybridization and adaptation to environmental change. Using genetic markers, including chloroplast DNA, Kremer and his collaborators investigated the postglacial recolonization of Europe by oaks, tracing geographic origins and migration routes. This work contributed to the European FAIROAK project, which combined genetic, historical and modelling approaches to reconstruct the evolutionary history and distribution of European oak populations.

Kremer has studied the genetic basis of responses to environmental change, combining population-genetic and genomic approaches with ecological and physiological measurements to investigate whether evolutionary change can occur rapidly enough to affect long-lived trees.

Through the European Research Council-funded TREEPEACE project, From Holocene to Anthropocene: The Pace of Microevolution in Trees, Kremer investigated evolutionary change in long-lived trees, particularly sessile oak (Quercus petraea). The project combined population genetics, genomics, ecology and ecophysiology to compare evolutionary changes across the Holocene, the period following the Little Ice Age and more recent environmental change. His research has indicated that evolutionary change in trees can occur on relatively short timescales and has highlighted the genetic resilience of tree populations to environmental change.

In a 2020 review with Andrew L. Hipp in New Phytologist, Kremer examined the evolutionary history and genetic diversity of oaks, including the roles of hybridization, gene flow and adaptation in the diversification and success of the genus.

2003:European Forest Research Award. 2014: Member of the Royal Academy of Engineering (Spain). 2016:Awarded an honorary doctorate by the Polytechnic University of Madrid