CultiVar project

The Agap joint research unit initiated a flagship programme of  Agropolis Fondation, specifically geared towards teaching in plant breeding: the CultiVar programme (2015-2019). This project involves different joint research units of the Agropolis community, along with some academic partners, initially in Senegal and Vietnam.

The aims of this project are to:

• Strengthen our higher education system, in order to train plant selection and breeding specialists (and leaders).
• Implement a wider plant breeding vision, while: Respecting a balance between scientific disciplines.
• Positioning cultivated varieties (CultiVar) as multidimensional objects for science and society.
• Promoting researcher involvement and research fronts for training and education.
• Foster the diversity of students and international partnerships.

In this context, teachers and researchers from different joint research units, assisted by teaching professionals, combine their efforts to incorporate into their existing MSc curricula some novel teaching activities that focus on the community’s research fronts, and are open to the outside world. Some new doctoral training models will also be created. At the same time, study grants will make it possible to create a small international community of students benefiting from the MSc curricula proposed in Montpellier, or following a course abroad, and to coach them throughout their stay. This programme has its own website.

The CultiVar project receives state support managed by the National Research Agency under the "Investments for the Future" programme with the reference ANR-10-LABX-001-01 Labex Agro and coordinated by Agropolis Fondation as part of the I-SITE MUSE (ANR-16-IDEX-0006).