Focus on Data INRAE (Institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement)

Updated at: 01/09/2026

The Data INRAE institutional space has existed since 2018 and served as the basis for the Recherche Data Gouv national repository, launched in 2022. It now hosts more than 6000 datasets.

Interview with the Data INRAE team

Is the space backed by a competence centre?

The Data INRAE space relies on the INRAE institutional reference centre and is linked to various local data management clusters, depending on the implementations of the submitting INRAE units.

Which disciplines are primarily represented by this data?

The most represented disciplines are agriculture, biology, food, economics and social and environmental sciences.

What is the process for submitting data? For creating a collection?

Anyone connected with the INRAE ‘identity federation’ can deposit at the root of the institutional space or in one of its three main thematic collections: Experimental-Observation-Simulation, Omics and Surveys & Texts, curation of which is provided by the Data INRAE team. The conditions for filing in other sub-collections (mainly projects or units) depend on the configuration by their administrators.

Anyone wishing to create a collection at the root of the institutional space or in one of its three main thematic collections can request it via a form accessible to INRAE agents. The administrators then manage the creation of their sub-collections and ensure their curation in accordance with the Data INRAE charter.

What curation is carried out on the platform?

In the ‘Omics’ collection, curation is done a priori. It is done a posteriori for the collections ‘Experimental - Observation - Simulation’ and ‘Surveys & Texts’. For the other sub-collections, the curation is done a priori or a posteriori (depending on their settings).

In order to harmonise practices within the space, and to increase the skills of curators, a network has been set up. Virtual classes specific to Data INRAE are regularly offered to this network. In addition, curators or administrators of Data INRAE collections can use the INRAE curation report template on the Data INRAE homepage.

Is there any integration with other repositories?

Yes, Data INRAE is linked to other Recherche Data Gouv institutional spaces or to repositories based on the Dataverse tool, in particular those of the french IRD (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement), CIRAD and CNRS, given the numerous joint research units (UMRs) and partnerships with INRAE.

Links also exist with thematic repositories, for example EMBL-EBI where scientists deposit their raw, often voluminous, data. To store their more synthetic processed data, they then prefer the Recherche Data Gouv repository, which is more general.

Do you have a model dataset or one you would recommend as an example of a ‘clean’ deposit?

A good example is the dataset of the CiTIQUE project (citizens & ticks):

Durand, Jonas; Bah, Thierno-Madiou; Lebert, Isabelle; Galon, Clémence; Carravieri, Irene; Masseglia, Sébastien; Armand, Jean-Marc; Marchand, Julien; Galley, Cyril; Chalvet-Monfray, Karine; Vayssier-Taussat, Muriel; Vourc’h, Gwenaël; Brun-Jacob, Annick; Moutailler, Sara; Bailly, Xavier; Frey-Klett, Pascale, 2026, "Dataset of the distribution of tick-borne microorganisms in human-biting ticks in France collected through a Citizen-science program (CiTIQUE)", DOI : 10.57745/FIRZ0C.

Other datasets from Data INRAE are highlighted on this page of Recherche Data Gouv portal.

Find out more