Mexico, central America and the Andean countries

Main research fields

In Mexico and Central America

• Stepping up work on ecologically intensive farming (agroforestry, cropping systems and agrifood systems, family farming, quality).
• Developing integrated pest and disease control (IPM).
• Supporting agricultural change, by means of methods and tools that smallholders can use (management, negotiating, farmer-led trials, participatory breeding, etc.).
• Stepping up coffee and cocoa germplasm conservation and management in in situ collections.

CIRAD works with national and regional bodies – Center for Tropical Agricultural Research and Education (CATIE, Costa Rica), Instituto Interamericano de Cooperacion para la Agricultura (IICA, Costa Rica), Promecafé (Programa Cooperativo Regional para el Desarrollo Tecnológico y Modernización de la Caficultura, Guatemala) – international organizations and the private sector.

In the countries of the Andean zone

• Contributing to scientific excellence, the production of global public goods, and the generation of knowledge that can rapidly be rolled out to small- and medium-sized farms.
• Supporting research on tropical crops such as cocoa, coffee, rubber, sugarcane, oil palm, etc.
• Improving product (notably fruit) quality, by developing new varieties, methods and processing systems.
• Fighting deforestation: land use planning, support for sustainable value chains.
• Encouraging practices that preserve soil fertility and maintain soil organic carbon, agroforestry.
• Analysing how public public policy is built and its socioeconomic and environmental impact.

CIRAD works with national and international bodies: International Center for Tropical Agriculturee (CIAT, Colombia), Bioversity International, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF, Kenya) and the private sector.

Platforms in partnership

• Mesoamerican Scientific Platform for Agroforestry - Agroforesta
  Platform is coordinated by Arlène Lopez (CATIE) and co-led by Luc Villain (UMR Diade), in Turrialba, Costa Rica.
• Public Policy and Rural Development in Latin America - PP-AL
  Network led by Jean-François LeCoq, from CIAT, Cali, Colombia.

Teaching and training

Our researchers supervise many PhD, diploma or vocational students, and are also involved in organizing higher education courses, particularly at CATIE in Costa Rica, the National University of Colombia (UNAL), and the University of the Andes (Colombia).