The 1136 Research Unit “Tree-Microorganism Interactions” (IAM), associating INRA and the University of Lorraine, was formed in January 2001 by merging the INRA Forest Microbiology Laboratory and the Henri Poincaré University (Nancy I) Laboratory of Forest Biology. In January 2005, the INRA Laboratory of Forest Pathology was added to the IAM unit. Since the merger in 2020 of INRA (the National Institute for Agricultural Research) and IRSTEA (the National Research Institute of Science and Technology for the Environment and Agriculture), the IAM Unit is now a joined Unit between INRAE (National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment) and Lorraine University .

The IAM unit is located on two sites located roughly 20 kilometers apart:

• At the Faculty of Sciences and Technology in Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy

• At the INRAE Nancy-Lorraine campus in Champenoux

IAM’s functional structure organizes research into three teams; two are located in Champenoux while the third is situated in Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy.

As of June 30th 2016, the IAM unit is comprised of 44 permanent staff members, corresponding to 43.4 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions and of 31 non-permanent members including 7 post-doctoral positions, 16 PhD students and 6 technical non-permanent positions. In addition, around 10 Master students (M1 and M2) are welcomed per year into the unit. The students stay within the research teams during their internships of two months for the 1^st year master students and for at least 5 months for the 2^nd year students. During the last four years, we had the pleasure to host more than 50 international visiting researchers (PhD students, postdoctoral fellows, scientific sabbatical leaves) and have been involved in the organization of around 40 international conferences and/or scientific workshops.