CIRAD

CIRAD (French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development) is a public research institution (EPIC) founded in 1984 and specializing in agricultural research applied to warm regions.

CIRAD has the following installations in France:

- its Head Office in Paris

- a research centre in Montpellier (Lavalette campus)

- a research centre in Montferrier-sur-Lez (Baillarguet campus)

- stations in the French overseas regions.

CIRAD was founded in 1984 from nine tropical research institutes, most dating back to the 1940s. The institutes were primarily non-profit-making organizations, each working to promote a specific production chain. They joined forces in 1958 to form a liaison committee specializing in the French overseas regions, before merging in 1970 to form the Groupement d'étude et de recherche pour le développement de l'agronomie tropicale (GERDAT), the direct predecessor to CIRAD.

CIRAD's main task is to contribute to rural development in tropical and subtropical countries through research activities, experimentation, training (in France and overseas) and the dissemination of scientific and technical information. It works with more than 100 countries in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America and Europe. Its operations are conducted at its own centres and those belonging to national agricultural research systems in its partner countries.

CIRAD has a staff of 1650, with an annual operating budget of 197 million euros, two thirds of which is covered by the State and the remainder by contractual resources.

- Research in interaction with field projects. The Montpellier centre provides scientific methods (genome analysis, crop improvement), techniques (in vitro culture, molecular biology, mineral analyses) and tools (databases, statistics).

- Services to researchers and farmers in warm regions (tropical disease identification, choice of control methods, varietal breeding, wood analyses, foodstuffs).

- Expertise: project design and assessment, and national and international agricultural research policy support.

- Training: the centre receives more than 800 researchers and technicians each year.

- Scientific and technical information, publishing journals, books and CD-ROMs.

CIRAD has three scientific departments:

- Biological Systems (BIOS)

- Performance of Tropical Production and Processing Systems (PERSYST)

- Environment and Societies (ES).

It is split into 35 research units:

- 10 internal research units (UPRs)

- 24 joint research units (UMRs)

- 1 service unit (US).

Since 2006, its publishing operations have been under the banner of Editions Quae, a joint publishing house with INRA, IFREMER and IRSTEA.

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