INRA and Irstea to become a single research institute in 2020

Two French EFIPLANT members, INRA and Irstea, are merging to form a new forest wood research institute, with more than 500 scientists and technicians. It will be known as 'Inrae' and its main areas of work will be forests, bioeconomy and biodiverstity.

By bringing together the range of existing complementary disciplines and skills in INRA and Irstea, the new institute will set out to become a future, global public research leader in the fields of agriculture, food and the environment on 1 January 2020. 

Thanks to the complementarity of the disciplines and skills present within IRSTEA and INRA, the aim of the new institution is to be a future, global public research leader in the fields of agriculture, food and the environment so that it can respond to major societal challenges: food and nutritional security, environment-health, agroecology, the management of natural resources and ecosystems (water, soils, forests, etc.), the erosion of biodiversity, the circular economy and natural risks at a territorial scale.

IRSTEA, the National Institute for Environmental and Agricultural Science and Research, is an EPST (Public Scientific and Technical Research Establishment) that is supervised jointly by the Ministers for Research and Agriculture.

INRA is currently the leading agricultural research institution in Europe, with 8417 permanent scientists, engineers and technicians, and ranks second in the world for its publications in the agricultural sciences.