Computational Plants and Eco-systems
Agropolis Fondation and INRIA commit to key and globally important interdisciplinary research

Montpellier, April 11, 2008

With the new challenges facing agronomics and sustainable development, Agropolis Fondation and INRIA have decided on a five year joint research initiative focused on the interface between Agricultural sciences, Mathematics and Computer Science.

A partnership with shared objectives

Agropolis Fondation is the Fondation de Coopération Scientifique pour la Recherche agronomique et le Développement Durable (Scientific Foundation for Agricultural Sciences and Sustainable Development), created in 2007 with an initial grant of 20 million euros by Inra, Cirad and Montpellier SupAgro – the initial founding members – recently joined by IRD, with the aim of promoting excellence and increasing the openness and attractiveness of French Agricultural Sciences on the international scene. As such, Agropolis Fondation privileges the financing of actions aimed at developing public or private partnerships.

INRIA has just adopted its 2008-2012 Strategic Plan for promoting scientific excellence and technology transfer and setting three multidisciplinary priorities including that of “Computational Plant”.

INRIA and Agropolis Fondation have thus just signed an agreement committing both parties, for a minimum of 5 years, to work towards structuring and strengthening a scientific community with a more global reach and one that is focused on mathematical and computer modeling of plants and their uses, with the objective of creating a major scientific hub in Montpellier.

This partnership is based on two objectives:

• Conducting a scientific program on the modeling of plants and ecosystems
• Attracting public and private sector financing to this type of program

“Computational plants and ecosystems”: Modeling plants and their uses

This is about building models to increase understanding and simulate the plant growth and the functioning of ecosystems, in interaction with their environments, as well as comparing the predictions of these models with observations, to help guide experiments. The challenges include the optimization and the adaptation of production systems as a response to climatic change and several biological stress, within the context of sustainable development.

The scientific program includes 3 main topics, namely:

• The computational “gene to ecosystem” modeling of plants and their uses,
• The development of software platforms,
• Increasing international collaboration with specific attention to the Mediterranean basin.

First Agropolis Fondation/INRIA initiative

The partners are launching today an initial Call for Proposals (CfP) on the theme “Digital plants and ecosystems” to get the scientific program underway. French and foreign teams wanting to collaborate with the research units of the scientific network supported by the Fondation are invited to submit their proposals.

 

About INRIA

http://www.inria.fr/

 

About the Agropolis Fondation

http://www.agropolis-fondation.fr

To find out more:
http://www.inra.fr
http://www.cirad.fr
http://www.supagro.fr
http://www.ird.fr

 

Press contacts:

INRIA Vincent Coronini Tel.: +33 (0)1 39 63 57 29

Agropolis Fondation Anne Causse Tel.: +33 (0)4 67 04 75 74

 PDF version of the Press Release