Broad international relevance

INRAE is keenly aware that global challenges must be met with teamwork. Consequently, the institute is involved in many strategic projects within Europe and further afield. In this work, INRAE is helping coordinate research in the environmental sciences, agricultural sciences, health sciences, and biobased economics.

Across the world, INRAE seeks to unite the scientific community around the pressing need to tackle major modern challenges. The institute’s many collaborations have led to numerous co-authored publications, shared infrastructure, and international research initiatives. 

These initiatives focus on issues of global concern: 

• Soils & climate change
• Health & the intestinal microbiota
• Prevention of zoonotic diseases
• Agroecological crop protection strategies
• Systems for adapting agriculture and forestry to climate change
• Agroecological transitions in food systems facing water scarcity and climate change

Within Europe

In Europe, INRAE helps inform the public policies developed by major bodies such as the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD), the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG AGRI), the Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE), the Standing Committee on Agricultural Research (SCAR), and the European Parliament. The institute also works closely with its main European counterparts, including Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, the Leibniz Association (a union of non-university research institutes) in Germany, and the University of Bologna in Italy.

In Europe, INRAE contributes to  

• More than 300 European research projects, of which 94 are coordinated by the institute 
• 6 European infrastructures, including 1 coordinated by INRAE (IBISBA.EU) 
• 6 European infrastructure projects coordinated by INRAE: EPPN2020, AquaExcel 2020, VetBioNet, SmartCow, PigWab, and IBISBA 1.0

Internationally 

INRAE structures all of its international partnerships so that they are jointly funded by the institute and its collaborators:

• International associated laboratories (LIAs) are laboratories without walls—they bring together research teams from INRAE and foreign institutes to conduct long-term research projects of excellence
• International research networks (2RIs) unite one to three laboratories per country and are headed by a scientific committee and a coordination committee
• Joint linkage calls (JLCs) are occupational mobility projects that help young researchers develop collaborations as part of framework agreements signed with foreign research establishments and various funding agencies