news 2018

A study conducted by the University Hospital of Besançon and INRA shows the protective effect of high cheese consumption from a very young age. For the first time, a link has been established between cheese consumption and the probability of developing food or skin allergic diseases, regardless of the consumption of various other foods (vegetables or fruits, cereals, bread, meat, cake and yogurt) and living conditions in a farm environment (presence and diversity of farm animals).

A study conducted by the University Hospital of Besançon and INRA shows the protective effect of high cheese consumption from a very young age. For the first time, a link has been established between cheese consumption and the probability of developing food or skin allergic diseases, regardless of the consumption of various other foods (vegetables or fruits, cereals, bread, meat, cake and yogurt) and living conditions in a farm environment (presence and diversity of farm animals).

The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC), of which INRA is a leading member, published the first wheat genome reference sequence in Science , on 17 August 2018. French research teams from INRA, CEA, and the universities of Clermont-Auvergne, Evry, Paris-Sud and Paris-Saclay contributed to the project, a scientific milestone due to the enormous complexity and size of the genome - five times larger than the human genome and forty times larger than the rice genome.

Connected hives, decision-support tools in viticulture, precision spraying, the use of drones, etc.; digital technologies now form part of the daily activities of farmers and presage a new vision for agriculture in the future. On 26 June 2018 in Montpellier, INRA, IRSTEA and the #DigitAg Institute for the Convergence of Digital Agriculture organised the Crossroads for Agricultural Innovation (CIAg) meeting on "Digital Technologies and Plant Production: Predict and Act".

How do young children aged between 6 and 18 months learn to eat different textures' Which textures do they accept as a function of their age? For the first time in France, INRA scientists working in collaboration with Blédina have studied these questions 1 . They showed that children accepted small quantities of most textures at an earlier age than their parents usually propose them at home.

France, the major bread-basket for Western Europe, experienced catastrophic yield losses in 2016. Scientists from INRA, CNRS and CEA 1 have shown that in 2016, and in other years, abnormally high temperatures in late autumn accentuated the negative effect on wheat production of excessive rainfall the next spring.