Montpellier's Agri-Food Platform Ecosystem

The ecosystem brings together three complementary partners:
° the Agri-Food Technology Platform of UMR QualiSud – Lavalette Campus,
° the Food Technology Workshop of the University of Montpellier – IUT Campus,
° and the PLANET Platform of UMR IATE – La Gaillarde Campus.

Platform synergies

Missions
The three platforms share three main missions:
° Research: participation in collaborative projects and delivery of scientific services;
° Training: hosting and implementing training activities;
° Industrial partnerships: developing collaborations and services with private-sector stakeholders.

These activities rely on a range of contractual frameworks, including collaboration agreements and service or research contracts.

Fields of activity
From raw material to finished product, the networking of the three platforms makes it possible to cover a broad range of expertise in process engineering, food product engineering, and by-product valorization.

The work covers a wide variety of matrices: cereals, legumes, tubers, fruit, vegetables, milk, fish, meat, as well as lignocellulosic biomass.

Processes studied
The platforms work on the following processes: cleaning; fragmentation; dry separation; wet separation; evapo-concentration; high-pressure treatment; drying; cooking; smoking; pasteurization; canning/sterilization; structuring; characterization.

Platform-specific expertise

The Food Technology Platform of UMR QualiSud:
⇒ A general-purpose platform in process engineering and food product engineering, specialized in the processing of tropical and Mediterranean products.
° Drying,
° Filtration,
° Vacuum treatments,
° Low-tech approach.

The Food Technology Workshop of the University of Montpellier:
⇒ An approach based on the search for technological pathways for the multi-unit-operation processing of bio-based materials into finished products.
° High-capacity vacuum evapo-concentration
° Pre-industrial powder production by spray drying
° Continuous heating/cooling by scraped-surface heat exchanger
° Ultra-high-pressure batch processing in 2 L

The PLANET Platform of UMR IATE:
⇒ A technological platform dedicated to the processing and valorization of natural resources
° Dry fractionation
° Dry separation
° Pasta and couscous lines
° By-product processing
° Dry separation
° Energy performance control of processing operations

Contacts
Food Technology Platform (UMR QualiSud, CIRAD): plateforme.agroalimentaire@cirad.fr
Food Technology Workshop (University of Montpellier): ata@umontpellier.fr
PLANET Platform (UMR IATE): contact-planet@inrae.fr