Performance of pea, lupin and faba bean, in organic cropping systems in France

Organically farmed pea, lupin and faba bean were compared in terms of dry matter (DM), grain yield and nitrogen (N) production, as well as for their competitive ability against weeds. Adjacent strips of pea, lupin and faba bean were set up at eight sites throughout the Pays de la Loire region. Soil conditions and weed pressure differed between sites. In general, faba bean produced slightly more grain yield and grain N than pea. Lupin was the least productive grain legume and the weakest competitor against weeds, though it provided grains with the highest N contents. However in most situations, pea was shown to be the most efficient until flowering for DM and N accumulation as well as for light interception and crop height. A faster development of aboveground plant parts at early growth stages and a better soil N uptake were likely explanations for the lowest weed DM of pea. However DM of pea, lupin and faba bean were equally limited by weeds despite the differences in weed biomass between these species

Agronomic performance and yield stability of pea-barley intercropping in European organic farming system.

Intercropping of cereal and grain legumes in European cropping system (INTERCROP) is an European Project in which a multidisciplinary team of scientist conducts research on intercropping under different regional organic cropping systems. The project’s core experiments was a field trial in which pea and barley were intercropped in spring sowing and compared with respective sole crops during 2003-2005. One of the main deliverables of the Project (Workpackage 2) was the evaluation of agronomic performance of intercrop in term of yield advantage and yield stability. Results of this activity carried out, in five European Countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and United Kingdom) in the basic field experiments, are presented in this contribution

Evaluation of the STICS crop model within the INTERCROP EU project to simulate pea-barley intercropping systems.

This work is devoted to the evaluation and utilization of the STICS intercrop/sole crop model taking into account the European environmental variability within an organic farming framework. The model ability to simulate intercropping systems was evaluated on the network of the INTERCROP EU project experiments. We first realized the difficulty to simulate relevant absolute production values in spite of a satisfactorily phase of parameterisation in conventional farming experiments. We attributed most of the discrepancies between simulations and measurements to the non accounting of biotic stresses. However, the relative values and in particular the Land Equivalent Ratios draw to the same results for simulation and observa-tion, i.e. the global advantage of intercropping compared to sole crops. Those conclusions caused us to think that the use of the model to test technical strategies was worthwhile. Among the different strategies we tested with the model, one showed that intercropping was very interesting in term of stability, and an other showed that the inter-row factor was a better driver factor for choosing density design than global density