National Institute of Higher Education for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (Institut Agro)

The National Institute of Higher Education for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, or "Institut Agro", is a university-level institution for higher education and research in agriculture, food and environmental sciences. Each year, the institute trains more than 3,750 agricultural engineers, masters and doctoral students. It employs 210 research staff working in 36 research units.

Within Institut Agro, the Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences Center (18 scientists, 10 PhD students) is the only one in France in charge of a polytechnical and multidisciplinary graduate and post-graduate programs, in fisheries science & aquaculture. This center works together with other institutes (IRD, Ifremer, University of Western Brittany and foreign research institutes). It leads European, international and national research projects. The Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences Center is joining forces with the Institut Agro's food center to help make the agri-food sector more attractive (consumer products and out-of-home catering).

In the framework of the Aquafish0.0 project, the Institut Agro team is involved at several levels, from the development of new forms of aquaculture to the valorisation of new fisheries and aquaculture products (by-products, by-catches, low trophic species and seaweeds). The Institut Agro has started an experiment in sea cages to study the growth performance of a combined abalone and sea cucumber farm, with a monospecific abalone farm and a monospecific sea cucumber farm. It will also be possible to study the effect of sea cucumber growth (associated with abalone) as a function of density.

Photo Credits: G. Raymond, Institut Agro