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The RARe research infrastructure brings together more than 30 biological resource centers (BRCs), whose mission is to collect, characterize, conserve and distribute biological resources useful for agricultural research.

The BRCs are grouped into five pillars, defined by the biological nature of the resources conserved (seed, seed, whole individual, tissue, bacterial strain, DNA, etc.) and/or by the purpose of the research to which the resources contribute:

• Animal pillar
• Environment pillar
• Forest pillar
• Microorganism pillar
• Plant pillar

Each pillar coordinates the activities of the BRCs in its field.

Generally speaking, RARe contributes to the preservation and better understanding of biodiversity. In particular, RARe offers secure long-term conservation of samples from long-term protocols (observation, experimentation, selection). By depositing them in a CRB, we aim to facilitate the reuse of samples that are well described, associated with valuable phenotypic data and constitute a reference for future studies. All the samples resulting from an experimental protocol can thus form a "collection", identified by a certain amount of metadata describing the population studied (species, breed, variety, strain) and the experimental protocol, not forgetting temporal and geographical data. These samples can then be supplied to researchers other than those who set up the protocol, as part of a policy of resource sharing, without neglecting the recognition of the researchers who created the collection in the first place.