Food, Global Health Reading time 3 min
New international microbiome observatory will promote global health
PRESS RELEASE - At the One Health Summit, INRAE CEO Philippe Mauguin announced the creation of a global One Health observatory focused on microbiomes. This news was shared during an introductory talk at Microbiomes at the Heart of One Health, a high-level scientific session held on April 8, 2026. The observatory will be led by the World Microbiome Partnership and jointly coordinated by INRAE and VIB-KU Leuven, with support from Inserm. It will be an unprecedented infrastructure whose aim is to clarify how global health is affected by microbiomes (i.e., human, soil, ocean, and agroecosystem microbiomes). It will also seek to establish an international repository for scientific datasets. The observatory’s goal is to characterise one million human microbiomes by 2030. Its work will facilitate the development of health indicators, research programmes, and new microbiome-based solutions.
The observatory can already count on the support of collaborators from dozens of countries across the world (e.g., Germany, Cambodia, Cyprus, South Korea, Egypt, Spain, the United States, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Singapore).
Published on 08 April 2026
A major scientific and public health challenge
The world is facing ever-more-intense health, environmental, and food crises, and there is a need to recognise the degree to which human, animal, and ecosystem health are interdependent. Consequently, the observatory is fully aligned with the One Health Summit’s objective of strengthening prevention and surveillance tools that operate at the international scale.
The world is changing: dietary patterns are shifting, urbanisation is increasing, biodiversity is declining, environmental pollution is climbing, and noncommunicable diseases are on the rise. In this context, microbiomes1are playing key roles in interactions among dietary regimes, health, and the environment. They can thus serve as essential tools for better understanding and anticipating how the above dynamics are affecting populations and ecosystems. In humans, there is an important link between the gut microbiota and health2. However, despite the significant scientific advances that have been made in this field, we lack sufficient data to establish robust global benchmarks and develop reliable predictive tools.
A quest to characterise one million human microbiomes worldwide
The observatory will build upon the foundation already established by an international alliance of human cohorts, who have provided microbiome data. To date, this alliance has assembled 50 cohorts or cohort coalitions from 25 countries to arrive at a total of 500,000 characterised human microbiomes. The new goal is to characterise one million human gut microbiomes by 2030, a threshold considered necessary to strengthen global representativeness, boost the statistical robustness of analyses, and allow the development of large-scale predictive models.
The aim of these efforts is two-fold: to establish an international repository for scientific data that is comparable to those of major genomic infrastructures and to pave the way for increased data usage, notably via artificial intelligence. The observatory will help eliminate several lock-ins, such as the lack of harmonised standards across countries or differences in regulatory frameworks; it will make innovations more equitably accessible to teams in the Global South.
Within France, the observatory will draw support from existing France 2030-funded structural programmes3, which are positioning France in the field’s vanguard.
A structural tool for improving prevention, research, and innovation
Via an integrated One Health approach, the observatory will seek to transform current systems for preventing and understanding health risks. In particular, it will make it possible to better characterise the microbiomes associated with certain health conditions, allow the early detection of risk factors, and improve surveillance of phenomena such as antimicrobial resistance.
By cross-referencing data from different environmental contexts and diverse lifestyles, the observatory will also help better measure how human health is affected by food systems, agricultural practices, and exposure to environmental pollution.
Beyond tackling public health issues, the observatory will promote the development of personalised medicine, precision nutrition, and innovative solutions for sustainable agriculture, all while supporting the emergence of a scientific and economic sector focused on microbiomes.
Two examples of promising advances:
Modulating the human microbiome to improve microbe-based human medicine
Analysis of the human gut microbiome can help predict a patient’s response to cancer immunotherapy, and faecal microbiota transplants are a means of improving treatment efficacy. Engineering the microbiome to boost health is the main pursuit of the French startup MaaT Pharma, which emerged from INRAE-developed expertise.
Modulating soil microbiota to increase yields and reduce inputs
In soils, using live microbes artificially selected for soybean farming could reduce the use and importation of nitrogen fertilisers, leading to estimated savings of $10.2 billion (2021 figures from Embrapa Brazil, for a 79% implementation rate). Reducing the use of nitrogen fertilisers can also help lower agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, as each kilogram of nitrogen fertiliser corresponds to approximately 10 kg of CO₂ equivalents of greenhouse gas emissions.
Looking beyond human microbiomes to soil, ocean, and agroecosystem microbiomes
Ultimately, the observatory intends to look at more than just the human microbiome; it will also explore the microbiomes of soils, oceans, and agroecosystems. This broader perspective will shed light on the interactions between human and ecosystem health, as part of a fully integrated vision of planetary health.
It will also foster a shift from an individual-centred approach to a more comprehensive view, where human health reflects the state of ecosystem and planetary health. Finally, the observatory will seek to identify and clarify microbial flows among habitats; develop health indices for these environments based on their microbiomes and ecosystem services (e.g., carbon sequestration, contributions to biogeochemical cycles); and build impact indicators and decision-support tools.
Newsletter - Stay informed on INRAE’s international research
Further reading - An international microbiome observatory and a new milestone for PREZODE: two major scientific initiatives at the One Health Summit
Event replay - Microbiomes at the Heart of One Health: From Soil to Plate and Beyond – YouTube
1. Microbiome: all microorganisms that live symbiotically with humans, animals, plants, soils, oceans, and other ecosystems and that are essential to their health.
2. The gut microbiota is involved in many chronic conditions—such as metabolic, inflammatory, cardiovascular, and neuropsychiatric conditions—and plays a decisive role in the effectiveness of certain treatments, particularly in oncology.
3. Le French Gut Project (the French microbiome); France 2030-funded research programme Food Systems, Microbiome, and Health (SAMS), jointly led by Inserm and INRAE; NutriNet/Nutrigut cohort.