Part of tomorrow’s agroecology could well be at stake here. On Wednesday noon, all the renovated buildings of the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (Inrae), on the Époisses estate, in Bretenière, were inaugurated.
. The estate extends over approximately 130 hectares.
More than €4 million of work Over the past four years, the site has benefited from a property renovation program worth €4.352 million. “Launched in 2016 and completed at the end of 2020 in the midst of a pandemic, this program was co-financed by the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté Region (€1.8 million), the European Union, via
the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), for an amount of €1.352 million, and Inrae (€1.2 million)”, details Inrae BFC. “The principle was to renovate the Bretenière site, where our experimental unit is, which has a very important role within Inrae,” said Philippe Mauguin, Chairman and CEO of Inrae France, who had traveling for the occasion.
A “much more powerful” tool […] “The premises were a little dilapidated, separated, not functional,” he continues. “The idea
was to set up this tool which is much more efficient. Agents will now be able to work in good conditions. They are next to the experimental areas, where a whole series of trials are being carried out, in particular to reduce the use of pesticides, and to try to do without, gradually, for example, glyphosate, which is not not easy. If around twenty agents are fixed on site, offices can accommodate researchers from the Dijon laboratories, but also from other Inrae labs in France, students, etc.
Two “very strong assets” in Côte-d’Or for Inrae […] For Philippe Mauguin, in Côte-d’Or, there are “two very strong” and “exceptional assets for Inrae”. ” [à Dijon]The agroecology unit [qui compte] , […]nearly 300 people, is the largest, in the field, in France […] , with a lot of very innovative and very high quality scientific work. And the experimental unit [et] represents a very important issue for precisely, to make the link, between the labs, the fundamental research,
the applications, the terrain, the farmers, the actual production conditions. »
Multiple approaches […]According to the CEO of Inrae, the two sites participate in responding to a certain number of issues: “How are we going to transcribe the results, in genetics, to select such and such a variety? How are we going to transcribe research results on soils, concretely, into agricultural practices that will be both more innovative, have good technical and economic performance, and have less environmental impact? [Ici] .
we are going to have agronomic and soil approaches, agricultural equipment, sensors, very competent people, researchers who will come, engineers-technicians from the experimental unit, who will work together to test these new approaches. This partnership, between the agroecology unit in Dijon and the experimental unit in Bretenière, I think is the place that is the most advanced in France. »
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Even today, the site retains beautiful traces of its history. Photo LBP /Vincent LINDENEHER
Even today, the site retains beautiful traces of its history. Photo LBP /Vincent LINDENEHERA story that dates back… to the 12th century “This experimental, historic estate is magnificent,” said Philippe Mauguin, President and CEO of the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (Inrae), on the occasion the inauguration of new buildings in Côte-d’Or. About fifteen kilometers from Dijon, in the town of Bretenière, the Domaine d’Époisses “finds its origins in the twelfth
e
century, when monks of the order of Grandmont built a monastery there”, recalls the INRAE of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté (BFC). “Mostly destroyed during the Revolution, all that remains today is the priory. » Experimental farm for several decades “In 1930, the railway company PLM (Paris-Lyon-Mediterranean) bought the site and transformed it into an experimental farm”, continues BFC’s Inrae. “The PLM is creating a plant improvement station there, in liaison with the Institute of Agronomic Research (IRA), the ancestor of INRA ( [le domaine d’]the National Institute of Agronomic Research, editor’s note
). Inra, created in 1946, bought the estate in 1953 and set up an experimental unit there. Several researchers in agronomy, who later became general directors of the Institute, went through
Époisses to carry out their work there. » A domain of 140 hectares “Since the 1990s, the 140 hectares of the estate, divided into several dozen plots, have enabled researchers at the Inrae center to experiment with cropping systems aimed at reducing the use of phytosanitary products. In 2018, the U2E (
Époisses experimental unit, editor’s note
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-) goes even further and totally embarks on the agroecological transition: almost all of its surface is dedicated to the new collaborative research and experimentation platform called “Ca-sys”. This project, co-directed with the Joint Research Unit (UMR) Agroecology, makes it possible to test a variety of pesticide-free agroecological cropping systems on 125 hectares. »V. L.
