The Context and Objectives of SPECIFICS

> CONTEXT

Accompanying the growing awareness of the general public on the threats posed by pesticides to farmers and public health and the constant decrease of bioactive chemicals authorised for pest control in French agriculture, the "Cultiver et protéger autrement" programme responds to the challenge of reducing the use of pesticides in agricultural systems. This requires a radical change from our simplified, pesticide-intensive cropping systems to diversified cropping systems using biological controls.

Seed legumes are key species for the upcoming agro-ecological and food transition. They are good candidates for the diversification of systems because they reduce the dependence of agriculture on nitrogen fertilisers and they also meet the population's increasing demand for plant proteins.

However, various factors hinder this transition to pesticide-free cropping systems rich in legumes. Indeed, as the current agri-food system has mainly favoured cereal crops, there are still many technical, cognitive and organisational barriers to the cultivation of seed legumes. In addition, they are susceptible to many pests and diseases, which limits their yields and therefore their development. On the other hand, genetics and genomics of pulses have made a giant step forward and have produced powerful breeding tools and methods that should now be effectively translated.

It is in this context that the SPECIFICS project was built.

> SPECIFICS'S OBJECTIVES

The objective of SPECIFICS is to provide new knowledge for the design of cropping systems allowing the insertion of seed legumes in pesticide-free cropping systems.

Our project involves agronomists, geneticists, pathologists, entomologists, ecologists, and socio-economists to :

• Improve grain legume bio-aggressors’ management
• Design pesticide-free cropping systems rich in grain legumes based on the principles of agro-ecology
• Analyse the performance of these farming systems at the socio-economic and technical levels, to rethink the organization of the value-chain and identify levers to accompany the transition towards the designed systems.

The experiments will take advantage of the CA-SYS, ABY and BioDiverSystem agroecology platforms, in which pesticide-free and legume-rich farming systems are implemented, as well as on a large dataset on cropping systems (technical data and management strategies) from DEPHY farms.

INNOVATIVE FEATURES OF THE PROJECT

The different levers needed to translate knowledge into successful innovation are usually studied separately in different projects. Working on these different levers simultaneously towards the objective of legume-rich pesticide-free agrosystems should boost the transition by a direct integration of new knowledge from one level to another one into decision rules for the design of diversified free-pesticide legume-rich systems and their adaptive management through meetings and guidelines for farmers, advisers and education.

The SPECIFICS project is divided into 4 WorkPackages:

• WP1 : Plant traits for pest control of pulses in pesticide-free cropping systems
• WP2 : Intensification of biological regulations at different spatial and temporal scales for pest, disease and weed control in biodiversity-based systems rich in legumes
• WP3 : Performances of pesticide-free legume-rich systems and conditions for their development: from farming systems to markets
• WP4 : Management, communication and training