EcophytoPIC, France’s Integrated Pest Management (IPM) portal, has drawn together details of the experimental work conducted as part of the country’s Rés0Pest network. The Rés0Pest experimental network aims to produce new references and knowledge for designing innovative cropping systems that are less reliant on pesticides, using IPM principles and combining different techniques to limit pest damage in arable crops.
The network has been designing and testing ‘zero pesticide’ cropping systems and assessing their agronomic, environmental and socio-economic performance, and analysing the effects of pesticide-free cropping systems on pest populations and natural biological regulation.
EcophytoPIC provides details of seven experimental sites where work has been conducted. To take two geographically opposed examples, researchers in Estrées-Mons in Picardie, northern France, have been experimenting with pesticide-free systems featuring two of the area’s key arable crops, sugar beet and soft winter wheat. At the other end of the country, researchers in Mauguio, Hérault, on the fringes of the Mediterranean, have been experimenting with rotations including durum wheat and chickpea in an area where heat and water stress are common. They believe lessons learned here may be valuable as climate change produces similar conditions elsewhere.
In Picardie, researchers have been working with a rotation of sugar beet, soft wheat, winter barley, a nitrate-fixing intermediate crop, green bean, winter oilseed rape (OSR) grown in combination with lentil and field bean, triticale and another nitrate trap crop. Mechanical weeding and stale seedbeds have been employed and 3m-wide grass and flower strips have been introduced around the plots to encourage beneficial insects.
Some of the important lessons learned have included the major benefits of combining OSR with other crops, the role of nitrate-fixing crops (in this case spring oats, mustard and vetch) in controlling weeds as well as their main role, the importance of good management of flower strips (in this case there have been problems with weeds) and the requirement for time-saving manual weeding (in this case manual weeding in sugar beet has been reduced from more than 80 hours per hectare in 2014 to 20 hours per hectare in 2017).
Regarding the combination of OSR with lentil and field bean, researchers report early concerns about growing this crop without pesticides. To add to their concerns the first season’s crop was hit by hail. However, 2015’s yield exceeded that of the local conventional system average. Researchers conclude that provided early sowing takes place, growing OSR with lentil and field bean limits autumn pest attacks, competes with weeds and provides a surface mulch during winter and spring, and helps fix nitrogen.
At the Mauguio experimental site in southern France (right), researchers have been experimenting with a rotation comprising lucerne, durum wheat, nitrate-fixing crops where possible (rainfall or the lack of it is a crucial factor), chickpea, durum wheat, nitrate-fixing crop and sunflower.
Researchers quickly realised that targeted irrigation would be necessary to stabilise yields and provide economic viability. They report that zero-pesticide production is possible, with varietal choice providing disease control in wheat in normal years, though technical levers still need to be found for weed control in chickpea. Similar to their northern counterparts, they emphasise the role played by nitrate-fixing crops in providing weed control. Before sunflower, for example, phacelia or a mixture of phacelia, white mustard and Japanese radish have been sown. An alternative is to use the stale seedbed technique.
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