BIOMATA’ International Associated Laboratory

During the visit of an INRAE delegation to Wellington, New Zealand, the creation of the new international associated laboratory (LIA) BIOMATA (Biorefinery for sustainable Materials and Technical Application) was made official on Thursday 30 March with the signatures of Philippe Mauguin, CEO of INRAE, and Helen Anderson, President of SCION, in person, and also those of Philippe Augé, President of the University of Montpellier, and Carole Sinfort, Director of the Institut Agro Montpellier.

This new LIA brings together the ‘Materials, Engineering and Manufacturing’ and ‘Chemistry and Physics’ research groups of the SCION New Zealand Forestry Research Institute, the Agropolymer Engineering and Emerging Technologies joint research unit in Montpellier under the joint supervision of INRAE, the University of Montpellier and the Institut Agro, the Biopolymers, Interactions and Assemblies research unit in Nantes and the Fractionation of Agroresources and the Environment joint research unit in Reims, 3 research units belonging to INRAE's TRANSFORM department.

In particular, the groups and laboratories involved in the LIA are working to develop biorefinery schemes to limit the environmental impact of manufacturing processes while remaining economically competitive. This global approach aims to develop processes for extracting value from an entire plant resource by considering a range of applications, depending on the properties of the different parts of the plant material, and by combining different transformation processes (chemical, physical and biological) to minimise inputs and waste.

The LIA's research projects focus on 3 areas:

• characterisation of plant materials derived from wood, wood by-products and various plant materials with a view to manufacturing advanced bio-based materials;
• the development of sustainable processes for manufacturing these materials;
• the design of materials and functional objects using 3D and 4D printing and the study of their properties.

The research will be conducted through synergistic studies carried out in the facilities of the different laboratories. In particular, it will focus on joint methodological developments for the characterisation and processing of advanced biobased materials, the co-supervision of trainees, doctoral students and post-doctoral students, reciprocal exchanges of researchers in the different partner laboratories, the organisation of seminars, giving priority to videoconferencing as part of an environmentally responsible approach to take account of the distance between France and New Zealand, and scientific mediation activities on the subjects covered.