APBio - Animals and Plants of Services for the Management of biotic stresses affecting Crops

Background and challenges

These studies mainly highlight the potential of animals to reduce pesticide use in cropping systems by consuming weeds, reducing their seed banks, regulating pests and diseases, preserving biodiversity, and cleaning and aeration of crops. These studies have also identified barriers to implementing and deploying this practice, as well as trade-offs that need to be made to avoid harmful effects such as overgrazing and the creation of bare soils, or browsing and bark stripping of crops by animals.

Unlike the concept of service plants, which appeared in the scientific literature at the end of the last century, the concept of service animals is emerging. In this project, we hypothesize that a joint reflection between these two concepts could leverage the advanced knowledge base on PdS to qualify and structure all the services provided by animals to crop systems and, more broadly, to plant-based agricultural sectors, even extending to the coupled design of crop-livestock systems.

Objectives 

The objective of this interdisciplinary consortium (physiology, genetics, health, systems theory, etc. in animal and plant sciences) is to structure discussions around an agroecological management of crops through the use of animals. Specifically, it aims to establish a dialogue between researchers from different disciplines working on the use of animals for managing crop health and pests, to unite initiatives around the concept of service animals and to conduct a combined reflection on the two concepts (service animals and plants), building on the work done on service plants. This project particularly addresses the obstacles and levers for the deployment of these practices by capitalizing on the respective experiences and systems maintained by the various INRAE research teams working on the topic.

Involved research units and partnership:

Contact of the coordinator(s):