Jean-Francois HOCQUETTE

Lifetime achievement Award

Dr Jean-François Hocquette is “Outstanding class Research Director” working at the Herbivore Research Unit of INRAE (the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment). His research interests concern muscle biology, genomics and consumer studies as relevant to muscle growth or beef eating quality. He was leader of the research team “Muscle Growth and Metabolism” (1999-2006), and Director of the Herbivore Research Unit (172 staff, 2006-2010). JF Hocquette’s research interest mainly concerns muscle biology as relevant to cattle growth and beef eating quality. He has developed research program on muscle metabolic biochemistry and genomics with implications in beef consumer science. The program seeks muscle biomarkers related to beef tenderness and marbling to better predict beef eating quality. Has published 240 papers indexed in Web of Science: 195 original papers in refereed international journals, 39 review papers in refereed international journals, >50 papers in French journals with and H-index of 46 from Web of Science (29 average citations per item) and 61 from Google Scholar. His impactful research is highly cited (~13,800 citations) and has contributed to the launch of a new premium beef brand (“OR ROUGE”). He will organise the World Congress of Animal Science and the annual meeting of the European Federation of Animal Science in Lyon in 2023. For his internationally recognized research programme of eminence, Dr Hocquette’s scientific pursuit led to mentoring (28 graduates & scientists) and international collaborations especially with Australia regarding the Meat Standards Australia (MSA) grading scheme to predict beef eating quality. He also teaches muscle biology, meat science and genomics at different leading French Universities (Clermont-Ferrand, Dijon, Tours, Paris, Bordeaux, Nantes). Dr Hocquette has been a highly sought guest speaker at international meetings focusing meat quality. So far, he has delivered talks at more than 80 international conferences. He is an editor of four books, as well as editor-in-chief of the French Meat R&D Journal V&PC (“Viandes et Produits Carnés”). He evaluated about 50 PhD, many research projects and over 66 research laboratories since 2001 as Dr Hocquette was a Scientific Delegate of the French High Council for Evaluation of Research and Higher Education (HCERES). He is also involved in the activities of EAAP (European Federation of Animal Science) since 2002 and was President of the EAAP Cattle Commission. Dr Hocquette was also an active member of the French-Chinese R&D Center on beef production (since 2010). He has given TEDx talks on artificial meat and more than 300 media interviews. He is nominated member of the French Meat and Agriculture Academies and received honors for his work since he was awarded twice by the American Society of Animal Sciences (2014 and 2021).