ENDURE gambled on its Mobility Programme, running from 2007 to 2010, as a key element in strengthening the capacity and competitiveness of crop protection research in Europe as it provided participants with the opportunity for the cross-fertilisation of ideas, experiences and techniques.
Given the time needed for these experiences to produce their sometimes intangible results, ENDURE is now collecting feedback from participants. In this article we present the testimonial of Dr. Aude Alaphilippe (pictured right), PhD, from the Gotheron research centre in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (France), on what benefits can be obtained from visiting other research groups through the Mobility Programme. The actual impact, in her case, was the publication of a frequently cited paper and the introduction of the techniques learned into a new FP7-funded project.
“The Experimental Unit for Integrated Research Gotheron of INRA (the French National Institute for Agricultural Research), which I joined in 2008, is specialised in fruit production. My research work focuses on the design and multi-criteria assessment of strategies towards more environmentally friendly production systems. An important part of my work consists of developing tools specifically adapted to the assessment of the environmental impact of fruit crop production.
“To achieve this, I am collaborating with different institutions, among which are the Julius Kühn Institut (Germany) and Agroscope (Switzerland). These collaborations began during the four years of the ENDURE project, thanks to its Mobility Programme.
“My participation in the ENDURE Mobility Programme gave me the opportunity to develop my knowledge on multi-criteria evaluation. During the first mobility of three months at Agroscope Reckenholz-Tänikon (ART, Switzerland) in 2009, I was trained in the Swiss methodology for Life Cycle Assessment (SALCA) and I contributed to both the implementation and the validation of this method in orchards. In a second mobility period of one month at the Julius Kühn Institut (JKI, Germany) in 2010, I learned to work with SYNOPS, which evaluates the environmental risk of pesticide use at a landscape scale
“These exchanges resulted in joint scientific communications, where LCA and SYNOPS were presented and examples shown to illustrate the interest of using these methods for both the evaluation and conception of new fruit production systems. Communication on SYNOPS highlighted the importance of landscape elements such as hedges or proximity to a river on the evaluation of the environmental impact. As a direct result of my experience within the Mobility Programme, a peer-reviewed paper (Alaphilippe et al ., 2013, details below), presenting the first apple LCA results based on a multi-year system experiment, was published. This publication became a point of reference for research on sustainable apple production.
“More important than that, however, these collaborations have fed new ideas and concepts into the re-design of fruit production systems, impacting not only my work, but that of my research unit and direct collaborators. Indeed, the work on optimisation of crop production strategies within PURE and other national projects takes into consideration the results of environmental analyses, which identify the strengths and weaknesses of production systems, and give attention to a scale greater than just the field.”
For more information:
Life cycle analysis reveals higher agroecological benefits of organic and low-input apple production. 2013. Alaphilippe A., Simon S., Brun L., Hayer F., Gaillard G. Agronomy for Sustainable Development 33(3): 581-592. (IF: 3.573)
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