Martinique

The Caribbean Agro-Environmental Campus (CAEC) site in Petit-Morne is the focal point for CIRAD's operations in Martinique. 

The CAEC currently hosts teams from CIRAD and IRD. There are some 40 permanent staff members, including a dozen or so researchers, across its various sites. They are joined by around 30 "guests" (interns and PhD students) per year.

An administrative team, under the responsibility of the CIRAD Correspondent in Martinique, is in charge of day-to-day management of the various facilities.

The CAEC site, in Petit Morne, Le Lamentin, covers 7 hectares, including 2500 m² of laboratories and offices, 3000 m2 of greenhouses and roughly 4 hectares of trial plots. This is supplemented by a 15-ha experimental station in Rivière-Lézarde (Saint Joseph).

The CAEC associates institutional partners working to:

• Contribute to sustainable development in Martinique and the Caribbean, by tackling the issues currently facing agriculture and the environment in these fragile island contexts, marked by substantial economic, environmental and social constraints, by means of a systemic interdisciplinary approach.
• Contribute to training through research and to teaching in the fields of agronomy, food security and the environment.
• Promote, on a regional, national, European and global level, the progress made by research in the fields of agronomy, food security and the environment.
• Strengthen regional and European cooperation by making new technologies or knowledge available and hosting foreign researchers.
• Analyse how rural territories and players function, to inform decisions on agricultural and rural development operations.