The DIVERSify project has launched a mini-series “exploring the benefits and challenges of cultivating crop mixtures as an alternative to monoculture”. The series is called Growing Beyond Monoculture and currently consists of three episodes.
DIVERSify (Designing innovative plant teams for ecosystem resilience and agricultural sustainability) is being coordinated by ENDURE’s Scottish partner, the James Hutton Institute, and is seeking “to optimise the performance of crop species mixtures or ‘plant teams’ to improve yield stability, reduce pest and disease damage, and enhance stress resilience in agricultural systems.
“It focuses on improving the productivity and sustainability of European agriculture using an approach that has global relevance, learning from the experience of international researchers and stakeholders.”
The web series includes contributions from many of the project’s 23 partners, including researchers, PhD students, farmers, agri-businesses and those involved in technology transfer, and has a broad geographical spread, including various European locations plus the Middle East and Africa.
Episode 1 examines the need to cultivate knowledge “from the ground up” exploring the benefits of diversification on soil health, with examples from France, Kenya and Italy, and the role of diversification in weed and disease suppression, biodiversity conservation and agricultural resilience at the landscape scale.
Episode 2 explores the challenges of managing the complexity involved in diversification, noting that nature is complex, so diversification is inevitably complicated too. In particular, it examines the challenges for plant breeding (including how crop mixtures respond to climate change), sowing challenges (ratios, spacing, densities etc.), management challenges (if managed correctly farmers can significantly reduce costs) and harvesting challenges.
Episode 3 focuses on cultivating knowledge from a number of standpoints, looking at innovation to close knowledge gaps, reinvigorating traditional knowledge and adapting existing machinery, plus scientific knowledge (in particular working towards shared objectives) and sector knowledge. The latter includes concrete examples of products made possible by mixed cropping, including a beer made with a combination of beans and barley (halving fertiliser use) and pasta made with a mixed crop.
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Last update: 24/05/2023 - ENDURE © 2009 - Contact ENDURE - Disclaimer