2019/01/01 by Benjamin Perrin, Perrin, Benjamin, Amélie Lefèvre +1
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #0 #4SYSLEG experiment #Agriculture and Rural Development Research #Agronomic Practices and Intercropping Systems #Association culturale #Bioagresseurs #Conduite #Crop management #Expérimentation 4SYSLEG #Intercropping #Légumes #Maraichage sous abris #Pests and diseases #Protected market gardening #Vegetables
paper · doi:10.15454/z7mn3u
openalex publication_date 2019/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
In protected vegetables production, intercropping practicing allow to produce a wide range of fresh vegetables while optimizing available productive soil area under shelter. Cropping two or more different species together in the same field during a significant part of the growth period can also bring other services such as pests and diseases control, soil fertility enhancement or yields’ quantity, quality and stability improvement. Numerous strategic and operational choices are expected while designing and managing such diversified and complex systems, but not all vegetables intercropping systems are relevant. To identify the systems with expected beneficial effects, an integrative approach considering all dimensions of intercropping is required. Some of the results from the system experiment 4SYSLEG funded by the French program Ecophyto deal with this issue and are presented in this article. Two cropping systems with intercropping of three species were compared for 5 years to sole crop systems. The experiment assesses if intercropping actually benefits from expected services in terms of pests and diseases control, soil biological fertility and marketable yields. Technical consequences of intercropping are also discussed. Designing intercropping protected vegetables systems so that it brings all beneficial