Agreenium

Agreenium is a legal entity bringing together the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (Inra), the French Agricultural Research Center for Development (Cirad), the Paris Institute of Technology for Life, Food, and Environmental Sciences (AgroParisTech), the Institute for Higher Education in Agricultural, Agrifood, Horticultural and Landscape Sciences (Agrocampus Ouest), the International Centre for Higher Education in Agricultural Sciences (Montpellier SupAgro), and the National Veterinary School of Toulouse (ENVT) which has been replaced by the National Polytechnic Institute of Toulouse (INPT). To strengthen the coordination of French actions and to foster synergy between research bodies, the public authorities created the Agence Inter-Etablissements de Recherche pour le Développement (AIRD) in 2008, followed in 2009 by Agreenium, a consortium of research and higher education bodies, with the aim of facilitating access to research and higher education facilities in France. Its purpose is to promote the role of agronomic and veterinary research to meet the challenges of food security and sustainable development. Agreenium implements actions and programmes linking research, training and development, representing the best that France can offer at the international level. Agreenium's status as a research and education organisation enables it to build long-term cooperation actions involving all or part of its constituent members, on a voluntary basis, while allowing each party to keep its own responsibilities and status. This flexible form of coordination allows the respective skills and expertise of all the parties in research, teaching and transfer to be implemented in long-term, large-scale international projects. In the future, other French or foreign research organisations and higher education establishments could join Agreenium as founder members or associates. The dynamics of this privileged partnership completes and strengthens the alliances already established by the six founder members with the other players of the French research and teaching system within the framework of the PRES (research and higher education clusters), and with other research organisations and universities.