As part of the QuaRES (Quality in Research and Higher Education) network, CIRAD and other public research organizations will be participating in the sixth Ecole qualité inter-organismes, from 15 to 17 September 2008, in La Grande-Motte (Hérault, France). The seminar is intended for anyone working in the research and higher education sectors who is interested in quality issues.

The University of Montpellier 2 (UM2) and Kasetsart University (KU) in Bangkok, in partnership with the Institut Pasteur and CIRAD, have launched a two-year binational Masters course in infectious, vector-borne and food-borne diseases: evolution, emergence, spread and control (called MIVA in France and "Bioveterinary Sciences" in Thailand). The course leads to a dual certificate: one French and one Thai. The last person to sign the relevant agreement was Gérard Matheron, CIRAD Director General, at a ceremony at Kasetsart University in Bangkok, on 26 May 2008.

Contrary to what one might think, cotton policy is not restricted to the subsidies issue, which usually dominates the debate, but encompasses a broad range of both problems and solutions. One aspect of that diversity was highlighted at an international conference organized at CIRAD in May 2008. Interview with Michel Fok, a cotton policy specialist with CIRAD.

Le Cirad en 2007: returning agriculture to its rightful place in the fight against poverty and inequality

A team from CIRAD recently identified the genes involved in the variability of carotenoid contents in various citrus species. These results are to be used to optimize citrus fruit carotenoid content and thus their nutritional and organoleptic properties.

The proceedings of the seminar of the same name, held in Montpellier in March 2006.

The GEOSUD project (GEOInformation for SUstainable Development) is a skills centre in remote sensing and spatial information applied to sustainable development, open to the scientific community and management players.The project, which has links with several members of Agropolis International, aims to develop ways of using spatial information in fields such as agriculture, urban and rural territories, the environment, coastal zones, natural risks, and health.

Gérard Matheron, CIRAD Director General, Marion Guillou, INRA President and Director General, and Michel Laurent, IRD Director general, signed a new five-year general cooperation agreement in Paris on Monday 2 June, with Dr Papa Abdoulaye Seck, Director General of the Africa Rice Centre (WARDA).

The latest issue of the CIRAD journal Fruits.

An analysis of how global food and farming systems might be balanced by the year 2050.