Experimental facility Végépôle

INRAe Clermont-Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes center has an experimental facility in Clermont-Ferrand called VégéPôle, dedicated to plant-based experiments.

This platform is spread across two geographic locations: Crouel site of INRAE ​​and Cézeaux campus of Clermont Auvergne University .

VégéPôle is made up of the following experimental infrastructures:

- greenhouses and equipment for monitoring environment and measuring carbon, nitrogen and water flows in controlled or natural environmental conditions from PIAF to meet the challenges of adapting tree stands to climate change;

- greenhouse and culture chamber type infrastructures of another research unit (GDEC) to ensure the creation, production, multiplication and quality storage of original plant materials to meet the scientific challenges of improving the yield and quality of wheat in a context of sustainable agriculture and global changes ;

- of a GMO UCA greenhouse managed by 3 research units (GDEC, PIAF, GRED);

- equipment and resources made available by research unit UREP.

VégéPôle is dedicated to the research programs of the support units

They aim to study in relation to climate change:

- improving wheat quality and yield in a sustainable agricultural context;

- response of trees to physical environmental factors affected by climate change (hydric, thermal, mechanical and wind);

- dynamics and agroecology of pasture ecosystem.

It provides scientists with

- 5500m² of greenhouse-type infrastructure and conventional and confined climatic chambers;

- 1 phenotyping platform with scales for the study of water stress;

- 1 platform for atmospheric decarbonation and gas exchange measurement;

- 1 experimental orchard integrated into the national network of observatories dedicated to phenology (SOERE Tempo)