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Instituts d'origine
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Neufs instituts de recherche sont à l'origine du Cirad.
Our history
CIRAD was founded as a public-sector industrial and commercial enterprise (EPIC) in 1984. It resulted from the merger of nine institutes specializing in tropical agricultural research, continuing a long tradition oflinks between France and the South.
CIRAD was created from nine French tropical agricultural research institutes, which were themselves mostly founded in the 1940s. Those institutes, which were generally non-profit-making associations, each specialized in a type of tropical production chain: cotton, oil crops, food crops, rubber, etc.
As long ago as 1958, the institutes joined forces to form a liaison committee for agricultural research organizations specializing in overseas countries. They then decided in 1970 to set up the Groupement d’étude et de recherche pour le développement de l’agronomie tropicale (GERDAT), which subsequently gave rise to CIRAD.
CIRAD itself has since been restructured, and its original nine departments have merged to form the current three scientific departments. These changes in the establishment's structure, prompted by a determination to adapt research for development methods to the realities of the modern world, are the fruit of ongoing debate and discussions with all our partners.
For further information
Bonneuil C., Kleiche M., 1993. Du jardin d’essais colonial à la station expérimentale 1880-1930 : éléments pour une histoire du Cirad. Montpellier, CIRAD, 107 pp., Coll. Autrefois l’agronomie.