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French Government grants additional €25 million to Agropolis Fondation

The French Government confirmed, on 16 May 2011, that it will provide an additional grant of €25 million to Agropolis Fondation.

This was following the announcement made by the Government on the selection of the proposal led by Agropolis Fondation as among those rated A+ and ranked 1st ex-aequo by the international jury out of more than 240 submitted under the French national "Laboratories of excellence" programme. Its proposals is in the continuation of the work the Foundation has carried out since its creation in 2007 with an initial endowment of €20 million from the State and its charter members.

Over the past four years, the Foundation's Fellowship Program has been supporting more than 170 fellows coming from around 30 countries from all over the world. Its Grant Programme is funding about 100 interdisciplinary projects involving more than 300 partners from more than 60 countries. The Foundation has likewise developed partnerships with AWARD, CAPES (Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education) and INRIA (Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control) where joint endeavors, including the launching of Joint Calls for Proposals, are being carried out.

Based on these and with the €25 million new funding from the French Government, the challenge is to achieve, over the next 10 years, a significant quantitative and qualitative leap on the following:

  • Favoring 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;
  • Reinforcing research involvement in major international programmes
  • Boosting human capital by setting up highly attractive Fellowship Programmes (seniors, juniors, post-doc, doctorates and pre-docs) that will facilitate international mobility, and by supporting innovative projects that combine research and training;
  • Strengthening linkages with the private sector (SME's, industrial groups, international foundations, producers' organizations...) as well as the valorization and dissemination of research results.

Meeting the above is expected to contribute significantly in making Montpellier a " place to go" in the field of research in plants of agronomic interest given the capacity of its scientific community to generate high-level scientific knowledge and use such knowledge to meet critical challenges related to plants, e.g., 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).