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Davide Bellone, Antoine Gardarin, Muriel Valantin‑Morison, Alan Kergunteuil, Foteini G. Pashalidou, Agronomy for Sustainable Development (2023) 43:20

The objective of this project was to quantify the ecosystem services provided by "cash crop-legume service plant" associations for winter oilseed rape and soft winter wheat, and their effects on subsequent crops in strict (more or less diversified) arable crop and mixed crop-livestock systems, in conventional and organic farming, and then to test different cropping practices and tools to support this innovation.

Valentin Verret, Antoine Gardarin, Elise Pelzer, Safia Médiène, David Makowski, Muriel Valantin-Morison, 2017, Field Crops Research, Volume 204, Pages 158-168

Landscape management is often seen as one of the levers to be used to improve pest management. However, the complexity of interactions makes it difficult to establish general rules, and, depending on the pests studied, landscape elements can have opposite effects, which have been reported in numerous scientific publications. In this study we link French epidemiological surveillance data for 30 of the main pests of French field crops with national maps of tree and field crop areas.

In arable crops, birds often occupy the highest position in the food chain, feeding on pests (phytophagous insects that attack crops) and their intermediate predators, mainly insects and other arthropods (such as spiders), that feed on these pests. The effects of bird predation on insect pest populations are difficult to estimate without a complete description of prey-predator communities and their complex interactions.