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Sustainable development in Amazonia: CIRAD is at the heart of a Franco-Brazilian cooperation agreement (CIRAD news, 01-27-09)

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Philippe Petithuguenin
CIRAD’s Regional Office in Brazil
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Brazil: CIRAD and EMBRAPA adapt their joint strategy for major world challenges

08/09/2009 - Article

The two establishments signed a new joint strategic declaration in Brasilia on the 7th September 2009, thus committing themselves for the next 6 years. The declaration, which covers four main fields, provides a basis for training and developing knowledge and innovations to meet the major world challenges of sustainable development.

CIRAD and EMBRAPA, whose mandates focus on agronomic research for development, have been working together for over 25 years on joint research projects. Now, they have made a 6-year commitment via a new joint strategic declaration, which focuses on four areas:

- advanced biology, particularly functional genomics, for breeding tropical, sub-tropical and Mediterranean plant species, to support the CIBA consortium, which links the Brazilian national agronomic research system (SNPA) and the French organisations that are members of Agropolis International;
- sustainable development of the Amazonian biome, to help implement the agreements signed in Rio on 23rd December 2008 between the French and Brazilian governments;
- public policies and sustainable regional development for family agriculture;

- tripartite cooperation, particularly geared to the less advanced countries in Africa.

“EMBRAPA is a major historic partner for CIRAD ,” underlines Gérard Matheron, CIRAD’s director general. “The quality of our relations and the pertinence of our joint projects puts us in a position to take on new areas of research, within a research partnership with global implications.”

The CIRAD-EMBRAPA partnership is the foundation of Franco-Brazilian cooperation in matters of agronomic research. In fact, it has one of the world’s highest concentrations of expertise in this field. There are now more than 20 joint projects, involving scientists based in France or Brazil, being conducted by teams of scientists from both institutions.

In addition, “this bilateral partnership is open to multi-partnership and international networks, such as CIBA, which was created on the initiative of EMBRAPA and CIRAD ”, adds Philippe Petithuguenin, CIRAD’s regional director in Brazil. Most CIRAD-EMBRAPA projects involve major Brazilian universities (UnB, USP, Unicamp, UFPa, UESC, UFCG, UFSC, UFRA, etc.), other Brazilian federal institutions (SFB/LPF, CEPLAC, etc.) or federal states (IAPAR, etc.) and French institutions (INRA, IRD, MontpellierSupAgro, AgroParisTech, Universities, etc.).

The signing of this declaration follows the renewal of the 2007 framework agreement, which sets out the administrative rules for the collaboration between EMBRAPA-CIRAD.