DAR-AE - Systemic Agronomic Diagnosis of AgroEcological plots with limited use of phytosanitary products

Background and challenge 

In France and around the world, a growing number of farmers are engaging in a transition towards agroecological farming systems that integrate a variety of levers, from the plot to the farm levels. The in situ study of these breakthrough systems is a source of knowledge for research and a source of inspiration for other farmers, including those in wine-growing systems, which are big consumers of phytosanitary products. 

Within axis A of the SuMCrop metaprogram (“Living with pests and diseases”), this project aims to understand the effect of combined levers, identified by tracking farmers’ innovations, on grape-growing agrosystems using few or no pesticides. Within a range of case studies, the project aims to identify, at different scales, the potential effects of the combination of levers on pests and diseases, yield loss, and other ecosystem services. 

This project is connected with the PPR CPA project “VITAE”, which also studies plot and farm scales. This complementarity will make it possible to put the plot results into perspective with the organizational and socio-economic consequences of the agroecological transition. 

Objectives 

The aim of this project is to contribute to scientific advances in the use of innovative combinations of levers to progress towards zero-pesticide winegrowing systems. For this purpose, we observe the effects of innovative combinations of levers identified by tracking innovations among agrocological vineyards from different French winegrowing areas.

This requires the monitoring of numerous variables and parameters in the systems studied (over 40 indicators monitored across 15 disruptive agro-ecological winegrowing systems), and therefore involves the interdisciplinary construction of a conceptual framework to synthetize the processes studied and the hypotheses formulated, a synthetic monitoring and data collection protocol, and an adapted approach to qualitative and quantitative analysis of the collected data. 

This project follows on and complements the first two years' monitoring of a network of around 15 agro-ecological plots across six French regions and will extend the range of indicators collected and the duration of the monitoring in order to have at least a 3-year series on a wide diversity of indicators.

The monitoring includes more than 40 indicators and measurements in the plant, pest, weed, practices, agroecological infrastructures, soil and microbiota compartments. The analyses will be based on the hypotheses formulated and will evolve according to the input from each data collection campaign to obtain an overall view of the functioning of these low pesticide consumption systems.

Involved research units and partnership:

Contact of the coordinators: