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Agropolis Fondation submitted a proposal called "Labex Agro" to the 2010 Call for Proposals (CfP) under the French Government's Grand National Loan. The proposal was rated "A+" and ranked "1st ex-aequo" by the international jury. Below is an executive summary of the proposal.

The Labex Agro proposal is in the continuation of the work carried out by Agropolis Fondation since its inception in 2007.

The Labex Agro aims to make Montpellier "the place to go" in the field of research in plants of agronomic interest given the capacity of the Montpellier scientific community to generate high-level scientific knowledge and use such knowledge to meet critical challenges related to plant adaptation to climate change, increasing demand for plants and plant by-products for food and non-food uses, as well as the prevention and management of risks (e.g., bioinvasion, bio aggression, resource scarcity and erosion of biodiversity). This ambition falls within the recent selection of Montpellier as the site of the headquarters of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research Consortium (CGIAR Consortium), thus making Montpellier the World Capital for Agricultural Sciences.

To carry out this ambition, the challenge is to achieve, over the next 10 years, a significant quantitative and qualitative leap on the following four levels:

• To favor research impact and the development of innovative solutions by supporting original scientific approaches privileging integration (from genes to systems), interdisciplinary approach (biological sciences, engineering and social sciences), and the exploration of scientific questions at the interfaces with biodiversity and ecology, mathematics and information science, chemistry, nutrition and health, and water sciences;
• To reinforce research involvement in major international programmes, including support to the development of collaborations with CGIAR Research Programmes (CRP);
  
• To boost human capital by setting up highly attractive Fellowship programmes (seniors, junior, post-doc, doctorates and predicts) that will facilitate international mobility, and by supporting innovative projects that combine research and training;
• To strengthen linkages with the private sector (SME's, industrial groups, international foundations, producers' organizations...) as well as the valorization and dissemination of research results.

To realize the above, a €35 million funding was requested. No announcement has been made to date as regards the level of funding accorded by the Government to each of the selected proposals.