CultiVar (Flyer of the project) an international multi-partner initiative, fosters exchange of information and capacities between researchers and students within established Masters and PhD curricula oriented towards plant breeding.

• Research-anchored modules: Partner plant science leaders are transforming their results into educational materials with the help of training/education specialists so that new pedagogical innovation can be broadly used and deployed.
• Interdisciplinary bridges: Interfaces between discipIines, action-research experiences and multi-dimensional matters are addressed through conferences, roundtables and symposia in order to expose students to the complexity of research for development.
• Student mentoring: Two cohorts of students from partner countries (Vietnam and Senegal) starting their Master in 2016 and 2017 are supported and assisted in order to stimulate personal development as well as assess and refine modules and training practices.

CultiVar main goals

CultiVar mobilizes a vibrant Research and Education community in Agropolis and its Partnership in order to implement crop improvement as an impact pathway. Faced with major global challenges, there is an urgent need to train more professionals who will:

• Explore new genetic sources of diversity
• Improve new traits in crops
• Leverage new technologies and concepts for advances in plant breeding
• Seize major scientific opportunities in biology and biomaths to boost plant breeding
• Establish new collective practices.

CultiVar also raises student awareness of the strategic, economic, ethical and political analyses which determine the field of plant breeding.

Sponsorship

The CultiVar project is funded through ANR (the French National Research Agency) under the "Investissements d’avenir" programme with the reference ANR-10-LABX-001-01  Labex Agro and coordinated by Agropolis Fondation under the frame of I-SITE MUSE (ANR-16-IDEX-0006)