The acting Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, has participated in the 50th anniversary of the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Zaragoza (IAMZ) and has highlighted the importance of this entity for its important teaching and research work.
The Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Zaragoza is a center of excellence that offers advanced and postgraduate continuous training; coordinates and participates in international projects and has a consolidated program of cooperative research networks.
Planas stressed that within the teaching activity of the IAMZ emphasizes the teaching of the recognized "Master of Science", for more than 30 years, which focuses its educational offer in agri-food marketing, plant genetic improvement and animal nutrition.
The institute has a program of 8 international master's degrees in the areas of plant production, animal production, science, technology and marketing of food, fisheries and aquaculture and the environment and water.
Each year more than 500 people from 40 different nationalities participate in short courses and master's programs of the institute, in addition about 370 professors from 30 countries, as well as 400 researchers integrate cooperative research programs coordinated by this institute, according to the minister.
He has emphasized that senior officials from different countries, especially from Africa and Latin America, have passed through this institute to complete their training.
In these 50 years, the institution has trained more than 15,000 leaders in the agri-food sector, he said.
The IAMZ carries out an intense activity, according to the minister, that it is necessary to spread and has valued that its educational offer, like the short courses, respond to specific needs of the sector such as the one recently celebrated on "Xylella fastidiosa".
Planas has also referred to the research activities of the IAMZ, studies that are highly valued by the sector.
The IAMZ is one of the four institutes that are part of the International Center for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies (CIHEAM) created in Paris in 1962.
The CIHEAM, of which 13 countries are part, including Spain, celebrated yesterday and today in Madrid its 143rd Board of Directors and in which the directors of the four institutes that are part of it, based in Bari (Italy), participated. Montpellier (France), Chania (Greece), in addition to the Spanish based in Zaragoza.