The Radio Isotopes Laboratory was established on February 23, 1965 as a training, research and public service center using nuclear techniques in the fields of health, agronomy and the environment. In the 1970s, nuclear techniques using neutron probes and drip irrigation led, with the support of the French Atomic Research Center (CEA), to irrigate the major cotton and sugar crops. in Madagascar and in the 1990s, the use of the stable nitrogen isotope, nitrogen 15, allowed for the first time to determine in Madagascar the real coefficient of use of nitrogen fertilizers in rice cultivation
In the medical field, nuclear techniques have made very precise diagnoses of diseases requiring surgical interventions and thus saving thousands of patients throughout the country.
Since the 2000s, the Laboratory still uses these isotopic techniques, but is moving more towards the use of stable isotopes such as 15N or 13C and using them as tracers to evaluate the ecosystem services rendered by the soil. These tools are thus used to understand the functioning of the soil and the soil-plant-atmosphere interactions to answer the big stakes of the development.