Background and challenges

Maintaining high-quality, healthy, and economically viable agricultural production, protecting crops from biotic stressors and from the effects of climate disruption, while respecting the environment and biodiversity, are challenges for both agriculture and health that need to be tackled in a global and transdisciplinary way at a regional scale. 
The Basse Durance Valley is one of France's major horticultural production areas, particularly for apples and fresh produces in the PACA region. Bordered by the Alpilles and Luberon regional parks, the area is characterized by a diverse landscape that is highly attractive for tourism and recreation. The area is relevant for studying socio-ecological transformations and demonstrating the added value of agroecological transition in terms of collective management of the biotic stressors, their natural regulation, and pesticide use.

Objectives 

The STRATAE project aims to build a consortium based on several laboratories from the INRAE-PACA center in agronomic and ecological sciences all conducting researches in the Basse Durance valley, but that are mainly disconnected to each other at that time. The objective of the consortium is to federate these research efforts to study the transformation of socio-ecological systems at nested territorial scales. Territorial objectives will be gradually built with regional stakeholders to initiate agroecological actions supporting the reduction of pesticide use in apple orchards and the withdrawal of active substances of greatest health concern. 

The consortium proposal aims to:

1. Specify the partners' expertise on territorial issues
2. Produce a map of territorial stakeholders and their interconnections
3. Characterize the opportunities and obstacles to territorial transformation
4. identify territorial sub-sets to support experimentation and demonstration of agroecological innovations.

Involved research units and partnership:

Partners :

Contact of the coordinator(s) :