Why analyse agricultural and agri-food products?
In a context of global quality, the analysis of agricultural and agri-food products is becoming increasingly important, whether at the level of their production, processing or consumption.
Already upstream of the chain, it is essential for the farmer to know the physicochemical characteristics of his soils in order to better adapt their sustainable management. Faced with the laws of today's markets, generally of international dimensions, farmers must have at their disposal tools allowing them to easily assess the quality of their productions in order to make the most of them, either for sale or for their own use.
Processing industries have an obvious need to fully characterise inputs and finished products in order to monitor and optimise their manufacturing processes. Finally, the consumer demands more and more information about the products he buys. It has also become a legal obligation to correctly label the products sold on the market.
Provision of Advice, Decision Support Tools, Warnings, varietal material, etc., based on 150 years of research
The advice provided to farmers is the result of the various services and themes of CRA-W, which since its creation has been interested in the development of sustainable agriculture that is more respectful of the environment. Many decision support tools (DST) have been created to allow farmers to position themselves in relation to standards or other farms (REQUACONSULT, DECIDE) or to manage their own farm (TRESOFERM).
CRA-W is also working with pilot centres to provide useful warnings to "correct" certain crops in the face of disease.
We should also mention that CRA-W works on many varieties, whether cereal or arboreal, in order to select species adapted to our climate or requiring few inputs.
