Fruit trees are generally grown as monocultures, even in organic farming. Such standardised agro-ecosystems can have low resilience and are dependent on external inputs (fertilisers, water, pesticides, etc.). The PARDESSYM project aims to explore agroforestry (hedgerow-orchard, syntropic agriculture, etc.) as a way of "unspecialising" orchards: shrubs, bushes and tall trees are then interspersed between fruit trees to provide services in terms of biodiversity, soil fertility, plant health, resistance and resilience to climatic extremes, etc.
The PARDESSYM project plans to evaluate the provision of these services as a function of the level of complexity of the agroecosystem, through the establishment of on-farm agroforestry orchards and dedicated experimental setups. Root interactions and soil functions, the effect of shading on photosynthesis and the economic viability of such systems are all part of the research programme.
Project leader and coordinator, field experiments
