Professional training and participatory research: Combined actions for developing organic rice farming in the Camargue region of France

In 2006 and 2007, INRA’s Joint Research Unit, Innovation, was a partner in a European professional training project within the framework of the Leonardo da Vinci programme. The objective of this project was to help develop organic rice farming in the major European rice-growing regions where rice is mainly cultivated in ecologically-sensitive areas. In France, the rate of conversion to organic production is much lower that what would be expected, since organic rice farming presents particular technical problems. The availability of expert support is critical to successful conversion and no structured training was available in the past. This is the reason why we developed a participatory training method that helps rice growers and stakeholders to convert to organic farming and to improve their organic rice production. Different training sessions were organised. The participants shared their thoughts about technical problems encountered and identified possible solutions. Some of the topics developed were weeds, soils and fertility, and varieties. At the end of these sessions, a motivated workgroup was set up. Some of its members even proposed to assess the efficiency of some of the techniques that were discussed during the work sessions in fields on their own farms. Furthermore, field visits were organised in the Camargue region of France and in Spain. Scientists and group members hope to be able to continue to work together after the O.R.P.E.S.A. project is over. In order to make this possible, we are now planning to initiate new research and development actions using the same approach

Production de références pour optimiser la fertilisation organique en riziculture biologique camarguaise (France)

La vitesse de minéralisation d’un engrais organique commercial a été évaluée durant trois années dans une rizière biologique en Camargue (France). L’effet de différentes doses d’engrais apportées à différentes périodes a été testé. En conditions inondées, l’engrais organique minéralise rapidement. Sur la base de ce résultat, nous montrons qu’une adaptation des pratiques de fertilisation organique, inspirée de celles appliquées pour des engrais minéraux, permet une meilleure valorisation des engrais organiques, découlant sur une meilleure rentabilité

French lag in scientific research on organic farming: a scientometric approach

France suffers from a large research deficit in most areas related to sustainable development and public health. The case of research on organic farming, within the framework of the broader sector of agronomic research, constitutes a largely under-investigated field. Even if the demand for organic products is rapidly growing in Europe, research in this field still suffers from a lack of funding and researchers. A bibliometric analysis based on key words from scientific publications (in English only) taken from Thomson Scientific’s ISI Web of Science reference database made it possible to determine sufficiently relevant indicators for a comparison of national research efforts from 2000-2006, and to therefore assess actual research priorities in the area of organic farming. Beyond traditional specialisation analyses, the ratio between the world share of publications of a given country in organic farming and its world share of publications in specific disciplines and sub-disciplines (according to the nomenclature of the French Observatory for Sciences and Techniques) allowed us to obtain these prioritisation indexes that act as policy and priority (or prioritisation activity) indicators for research institutions involved in the concerned area. An index above 1 indicates an over-specialisation, whereas an index below 1 indicates an under-specialisation. For the period 2000-2006, the European Union obtained a specialisation index of 1.52 in the area of organic farming, compared to 0.68 for the US, 0.98 for Brazil and 0.18 for China. However, this seemingly satisfactory average for Europe as a whole hides important disparities between European countries. Moreover, France is at the very end of the classification for all indexes with only 0.47 specialisation, compared to Germany with 1.19, Italy with 1.39, Austria with 2.78, Sweden with 3.99, Finland with 4.46 and Denmark with 12.19. The prioritisation index for organic farming in comparison to the discipline, “Applied biology and ecology”, is 1.65 for the EU27, 0.69 for the US, 1.7 for Germany, 3.98 for Austria, 3.84 for Finland, 9.45 for Denmark and 0.49 for France. In comparison to the subdiscipline, “Agriculture, plant biology” the index is 1.5 for the EU27, 0.98 for the US, 1.61 for Germany, 3.28 for Austria, 1.52 for Finland, 9.79 for Denmark, and 0.41 for France. Finally, for the sub-discipline, “Agro-food”, it is 1.86 for the EU27, 0.73 for the US, 1.98 for Germany, 6.92 for Austria, 7.39 for Finland, 9.39 for Denmark and 0.58 for France. These results confirm that research on organic farming is largely under-prioritised in France. The French national research effort is therefore far from meeting the ecological and economic challenges facing agriculture in the 21st century

Novelty Search in Competitive Coevolution

One of the main motivations for the use of competitive coevolution systems is their ability to capitalise on arms races between competing species to evolve increasingly sophisticated solutions. Such arms races can, however, be hard to sustain, and it has been shown that the competing species often converge prematurely to certain classes of behaviours. In this paper, we investigate if and how novelty search, an evolutionary technique driven by behavioural novelty, can overcome convergence in coevolution. We propose three methods for applying novelty search to coevolutionary systems with two species: (i) score both populations according to behavioural novelty; (ii) score one population according to novelty, and the other according to fitness; and (iii) score both populations with a combination of novelty and fitness. We evaluate the methods in a predator-prey pursuit task. Our results show that novelty-based approaches can evolve a significantly more diverse set of solutions, when compared to traditional fitness-based coevolution.Comment: To appear in 13th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN 2014

Establishing references to optimise organic fertilisation in organic rice farming in the Camargue region of France

The mineralization rate of a commercial organic fertiliser was evaluated over the course of three years in an organic rice field in the Camargue (France). The effect of different mounts of fertiliser applied at different periods was tested. The organic fertiliser rapidly mineralised under flooded conditions. On the basis of this result, we demonstrated that an adaptation of organic fertilisation practices, similar to those employed for mineral fertilisers, would result in the optimisation of organic fertilisers, leading to improved profitability

Premiers essais de comportement de quelques espèces d'Acacias gommiers australiens en Corse du sud

Une expérimentation a été menée en Corse du sud, de 1983 à 1986 afin de tester les capacités de croissance et production gommière d une vingtaine d espèces d Acacias australiens (1 500 individus environ). La moitié d entre elles ont produit de la gomme en plus ou moins grande quantité. Parmi les 7 espèces plus particulièrement retenues, l Acacia mearnsii s est révélé très remarquable par la qualité de sa gomme proche de celle du meilleur gommier saharien, Acacia senegal

Impact of solid waste disposal on nutrient dynamics in a sandy catchment

Groundwaters impacted by mature landfill leachate are generally enriched in ammonium. In order to assess the dynamics of ammonium exchanges between leachates and the water system inside a sandy permeable catchment we measured ammonium, nitrate and chloride concentrations in the stream and in sediment pore waters of the streambed of a landfill impacted aquifer. Geophysical investigation methods complemented the biogeochemical survey. The studied zone is a 23 km² catchment located in a coastal lagoon area sensitive to eutrophication risk. Ammonium concentrations in the river were up to 800 µmol l−1 during low water period in summer. Three surveys of the river chemistry showed a regular increase in ammonium, nitrate and chloride concentrations along a 1 km section of the watercourse, downstream the landfill, implying that the leachate plume exfiltrates along this section. Sediment cores collected within this section showed all an increase in ammonium concentrations with depth in pore waters as a consequence of the landfill leachate dispersion, as attested by a simultaneous increase in chloride concentrations. Nitrate enrichment in the river water was due to nitrification of ammonium at the interface between groundwater and streamwater. The apparent nitrification rate obtained was within values reported for turbid estuaries, although the river contained very little suspended particulate matter. Actually, pore water chemistry suggests that nitrification occurred for the most part in subsurface permeable sediments, rather than in stream water. The overall topographic, hydrological, geochemical, and geoelectrical data set permit to estimate the extension of the chloride and ammonium plume. The estimation of the apparent ammonium plume velocity is 23 m year−1 whereas the chloride plume velocity should be 50 m year−1. The river is the outlet of the impacted groundwaters. Considering that the input of ammonium from the landfill is balanced by the present day output via the river, the residence time of ammonium in the aquifer is between 7 and 18 years

Broadband terahertz heterodyne spectrometer exploiting synchrotron radiation at megahertz resolution

International audienceA new spectrometer allowing both high resolution and broadband coverage in the terahertz (THz) domain is proposed. This instrument exploits the heterodyne technique between broadband synchrotron radiation and a quantum cascade laser (QCL) based molecular THz laser that acts as the local oscillator (LO). Proof of principle for exploitation for spectroscopy is provided by the recording of molecular absorptions of hydrogen sulfide (H 2 S) and methanol (CH 3 OH) around 1.073 THz. Ultimately, the spectrometer will enable to cover the 1-4 THz region in 5 GHz windows at Doppler resolution