UniLaSalle has inaugurated the Indoor Farming Research Center on its Rouen campus. The center completes the teaching and research establishment's R&D facilities, providing it with the tools it needs to devise solutions to support farming and local communities.
Composed of 3 modular units, covering a total area of 165 m², the center hosts equipment for controlling crop environments, nutrition, and irrigation, combined with aerial root phenotyping stations. The research carried out at the new center will meet three major objectives: Identifying growth conditions to develop the production of value-added molecules, Optimizing crop production (for nutritional, gastronomic, and cosmetic purposes), regardless of climate or seasonality, and studying the adaptation of varieties to climate change.
Meeting major challenges
Indoor agriculture offers a multitude of value-adding opportunities for the profit of many sectors, including cosmetics, pharmacology, food, and technology.
The opening of the center comes at a time when consumer expectations in terms of product quality and environmental protection are increasingly demanding. Indoor production is a means of securing some of our supplies, providing sanitary and nutritional quality (notably through pesticide-free production), and minimizing the impact on natural resources.
Global R&D complexity
Since 2016, UniLaSalle has been developing, on its campus in Rouen, a set of technologies for the benefit of plant production, offering all the conditions needed to evaluate new agroecological practices.
- In addition to the Indoor Farming Research Center, the 600 m2 Normand Serre station features controlled greenhouses for soil studies.
- 390m² of research laboratories and technological platforms also enable the characterization of soils, plants, and biodiversity and the understanding of soil/plant/microorganism interaction mechanisms for associated agroecological production.
- A data modeling center completes the set-up to enhance the value of the data and reference systems obtained.
The financing plan for a total budget of €807,770
Normandy Region: €283,500
European Regional Development Fund: €403,885
UniLaSalle self-financing: €120,385
UniLaSalle Rouen
UniLaSalle Rouen is an engineering and veterinary school with EESPIG (Etablissement Enseignement Supérieur Privé d'Intérêt Général) accreditation. It offers a wide range of courses: Agronomy and agro-industry Engineering, Agro Food and Environmental Engineering (international curriculum 100% in English), Veterinary School (unique in Normandy), as well as Masters and continuing education.
Located just 15 minutes from the historic center of Rouen, the lively, human-scale campus is also home to several research units and a host of cutting-edge technological facilities.
UniLaSalle Group
UniLaSalle is a Polytechnic Institute and a Private Higher Education Establishment of General Interest, born of the merger of five engineering schools with complementary themes and the creation of a veterinary school. At the heart of the challenges of transition, it represents a new generation of Grande École, uniting the sciences of Life, Earth, Environment, and Energy with industrial sciences and digital technologies.
Convinced that solutions to human and planetary challenges lie at the crossroads of disciplines, UniLaSalle's strength lies in its interdisciplinarity and its broad spectrum of training courses, from bachelor's to doctorate level. Through its research serving companies, sectors, and regions, and through its training courses, UniLaSalle is committed to building, together, a more humane, fairer, and sustainable world.
A member of the worldwide LaSalle Universities network, UniLaSalle has been pursuing its educational project for 170 years: to reveal the potential of each student so that he or she becomes a committed player in society and acts for the common good.
For more information:
Lison Mauchant, Communications Officer
UniLaSalle Rouen
Tel.: +33 6 72 50 30 43
[email protected]
www.unilasalle.fr