EcoViti: a systemic approach to design low pesticide vineyards
Résumé
With the emergence of a social pressure for an “environmentally friendly” agriculture, the reduction of pesticide use is a key component of sustainable agriculture. Despite the efforts made toward a lower use of pesticides, some limits have been reached. To go further, a more integrated modification of the crop management system becomes necessary. The EcoViti project proposes a method for prototyping new vineyard cropping systems at field scale. The method is based on expert knowledge, conceptual modelling and field experiments in a coordinated network of experimental platforms. This systemic approach has several differences with the classical experimental approach, either in the design of the experiments or in the project management, which are discussed here.