FRANCHE-COMTÉ is a region with no less than 6 AOC wine growing areas, 5 AOC cheese types, 1 AOC mountain honey and 1 AOC poulet de Bresse chicken. To these AOC labels can be added 5 labels rouge ( French quality certification ) and ten or more PGIs.*
With its high quality produce, FRANCHE-COMTÉ is associated with the agrifoodstuffs cluster, Vitagora.

Vitagora?
Vita for life, vitality, health
Agora for exchange and debate.
The Vitagora centre combines all the know-how required to contribute on a world scale to the development of quality foods.

Bases of the centre:

Industrial base	7 industrial sectors 8 bases of expertise 100 companies
Research base
Training base

The leader in taste sciences  :
Designing a new generation of products requires integration of know-how from 5 major complementary fields that cover the entire production chain, “from the pitch-fork to the fork”.
• Agricultural sciences
• Taste sciences
• Nutrition and health sciences
• Process and transformation engineering
• Hi-tech packaging techniques
In a single region, Vitagora boasts a full range of skills in these 5 fields as well as internationally renowned leadership in taste sciences.

Strategy:
Vitagora is developing a strategy to pool innovation resources around 4 cross-disciplinary themes:
• Promoting control of quality in the production chain
• Promoting the concept of the land and its distinctive characteristics
• Hi-tech innovation in “natural logic”: from foods to consumers
• Innovative approaches to chronic diseases

Results:
60 projects in the portfolio including 32 projects funded and deployed
63 million euros of investments in R&D for the projects funded
484 million euros in additional turnover from the funded projects (forecasts up to the end of 2012)
418 jobs created (forecasts up to the end of 2012)
11 businesses created / deployed in the Burgundy and Franche-Comté regions