The SAVE UMR (Mixed Research Unit) develops research mainly on the wine-growing agro-ecosystem with a view to understanding the mechanisms underlying the establishment and development of diseases and populations of harmful insects.

The purpose of the research conducted by SAVE is to develop integrated and long-lasting vine protection, while dramatically reducing the reliance on traditional chemical treatments. This outcome corresponds to a context of global changes, i.e. changing winemaking practices, climate change and societal demand.
This goal requires interactions among different approaches and disciplines: ecology of interactions and communities, pathology, entomology, epidemiology, modeling of complex systems, genetics of populations and genomics.

The SAVE UMR's activities are structured into different levels of the understanding of the operation of the vineyard ecosystem in two main research areas:
Biology of populations of bioagressors and natural enemies, covering simple ‘environment/plant’ – bioagressor interactions
Ecology of trophic networks and communities covering complex interactions, associations of species and the vineyard plot in the landscape