Application of DEXiPM as a tool to co-design pome fruit systems towards sustainability

The design of fruit production systems considering the latest innovations is a real challenge. Before being tested in an experimental station or in real farm conditions, the global sustainability of these newly designed orchards needs to be evaluated. Based on the DEXiPM® model, the DEXiPM-pomefruit tool has been designed to make an ex ante assessment of the sustainability of innovative orchard systems. This model is based on a decision tree breaking the decisional problems of sustainability assessment into simpler units, referring to the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability. Based on two case studies, we present here the steps and thought process of our group to improve fruit production systems towards innovative and integrated production systems. DEXiPM-pomefruit tool has been tested on apple and pear production systems in the frame of a working group of European researchers. It proved to be sufficiently reliable to select the most promising innovations in a given context. DEXiPM-pomefruit was also used as a dashboard to determine strengths and weaknesses of the tested production systems and therefore to identify improvements

PURE: WP5 -Milestone MS14 : descriptions of most important innovative non-chemical methods to control pests in apple and pear orchards

The objective of this report is the collation of existing and innovative non-chemical tools for key pests and diseases of pomefruit in 5 European regions.This report gives also a brief overview of the major pests in apple and pear orchards for the 5 regions in the context of their climatic and common cultivation conditions. The report is meant to be used as a guide within the frame of the PURE project for the identification of innovative IPM tools and assembling IPM solutions for pest control in pomefruit, i.e. developing for each key pest and region specific toolboxes, consisting of a set of complementary, promising toolsand strategies for pest management. In order to achieve this aim and to ease the data collation a database was developed

A multi-attribute decision method for assessing the overall sustainability of crop protection strategies: a case study based on apple production in Europe

In this study, we investigated the elements that must be considered to obtain a clear and useful assessment of sustainability. We present a system-description tool created especially for life cycle assessment (assessment of energy use and ecotoxicity), environmental risk assessment, and full-cost calculations. Using the various results from these assessments as qualitative attributes, we designed a multi-attribute tool that allows us to integrate sustainability attributes over five levels into an overall sustainability rating. To demonstrate the transparency of this method and how it enables decision makers to deal with complexity, we use the method to assess different crop protection systems used in apple production. Although the multi-attribute decision method provided a reasonable overall assessment of the sustainability of different protection systems, the assessment could be substantially influenced by the selection of rating scales and decision rules. Therefore, the rating scales and decision rules should be carefully defined and discussed among the research teams. In our case, experts have participated from five European countrie

Multicriteria evaluation of innovative IPM systems in pome fruit in Europe

Pesticides represent the major input in pome fruit across Europe. They are mainly used on a calendar-based approach in order to control a large number of pests and diseases causing both direct and indirect losses. This situation has stimulated research for innovative tools and methods for pest management and the PURE project (www.pure-ipm.eu) organised a biointensive framework to demonstrate that several solutions are now available but they need to be properly transferred to the growers to be applied on a large scale. This paper presents the experience of the PURE project across demonstration orchards in different countries. The aim was to develop a multicriteria evaluation to help more clearly define the advantages and disadvantages of applying innovative Integrated Pest Management (IPM) systems, for different pests (pear psylla and apple codling moth) and diseases (pear brown spot and apple scab) on pome fruit, compared to standard IPM (i.e. currently adopted IPM system). The multicriteria approach permitted to assess environmental risks, economic effects and sustainability impact for each of the innovative systems tested. This multicriteria assessment showed that, in general, innovative performed better than standard for environmental quality and provided similar yield and pest management without any significant extra costs

Multicriteria evaluation of innovative IPM systems in pome fruit in Europe

Pesticides represent the major input in pome fruit across Europe. They are mainly used on a calendar-based approach in order to control a large number of pests and diseases causing both direct and indirect losses. This situation has stimulated research for innovative tools and methods for pest management and the PURE project (. www.pure-ipm.eu) organised a biointensive framework to demonstrate that several solutions are now available but they need to be properly transferred to the growers to be applied on a large scale. This paper presents the experience of the PURE project across demonstration orchards in different countries. The aim was to develop a multicriteria evaluation to help more clearly define the advantages and disadvantages of applying innovative Integrated Pest Management (IPM) systems, for different pests (pear psylla and apple codling moth) and diseases (pear brown spot and apple scab) on pome fruit, compared to standard IPM (i.e. currently adopted IPM system). The multicriteria approach permitted to assess environmental risks, economic effects and sustainability impact for each of the innovative systems tested. This multicriteria assessment showed that, in general, innovative performed better than standard for environmental quality and provided similar yield and pest management without any significant extra costs

Temperature response of parameters of a biochemically based model of photosynthesis. II. A review of experimental data

13 page(s

Application of DEXiPM® to assess the sustainability of an innovative apple production system: the exclusion netting

Tree crops production are highly dependent on external inputs, namely pesticides. Redesign tree crop production on other bases becomes a necessity. Before being tested in an experimental station or in real farm conditions, the global sustainability of these newly designed orchards needs to be evaluated. Adapted on the DEXiPM® model, the DEXiPM-pomefruit tool has been designed to make an ex ante assessment of the sustainability of innovative orchard systems. This model is based on a decision tree breaking the decisional problems of sustainability assessment into simpler units, referring to the economic,social and environmental dimensions of sustainability. In the frame of the PURE European project, we tested DEXIPM-pomefruit relevancy to assess the sustainability of innovative orchards. Two apple production systems were compared: one with exclusion netting against codling moth and one without. Exclusion netting is an innovative control method, which decreases the number of treatments by 30 % since all treatments against codling moth are suppressed. Moreover nets represent a good protection against yield loss risk due to climatic conditions (i.e. hail). However, its cost requires an important investment capacity. Assessed by DEXiPM-Pomefruit, the exclusion netting system globally ranked better than the uncovered system. Concerning the social aspect, the result was similar for both production systems. In contrast, economical performances were improved in orchards covered with nets, which are therefore protected against the climatic risk of yield loss. Moreover, the important decrease in pesticide use under nets contributed to improve all environmental impact indicators. DEXiPM-pomefruit helped selecting the most promising innovations in a given context. It was also used as a dashboard to determine strengths and weaknesses of the tested production systems and therefore to identify potential improvement