Evaluating and designing agroecological cropping systems for family farming in the South
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The research unit "Agroecology and sustainable intensification of annual crops" (AIDA) works on the intensification and sustainability of annual crop production in terms of quantity and, where relevant, quality, in a particularly constrained tropical environment. To that end, the aim of its research is to ensure optimum use of available resources, by exploiting the ecological processes that govern their dynamics within agrosystems.
It makes coordinated use of all the technical components and all the associated disciplines that contribute towards such optimum use, whether it involve the integrated management of trophic resources or of pests and diseases, and including varieties. It is involved in developing a wide range of assessment methods and tools for different purposes, different people and different scales, including spatial information modelling or analysis.
By including agricultural engineering, it goes as far as to propose novel systems and concrete technical options that can be co-designed then adapted with producers and local stakeholders. It seeks to document some major challenges facing society and to fuel the associated debates: food security, the major agricultural and environmental balances (carbon, water, minerals) and agro‑ecosystem interactions with biodiversity and climate change.
Agenda
Our research teams
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- Ecological Processes and Services - PROSE
- Better understanding the mechanisms of ecological regulation of agronomic interest
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- Integrated and multi-scale evaluation of farming systems - ESTIME
- Assessing the agronomic, environmental and socio-economic performance of cropping systems
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- Participatory agroecological systems transformation - TAPAGE
- Combining agro-ecological intensification of production and mobilisation of ecosystem services in family farming
Key figures of the unit
- 90
- Salaried staff
- 50%
- Salaried staff outside metropolitan France
- 72
- Trainees and doctoral students
- >40
- Partners in France and abroad
- 105
- Projects and expertise