2023/12/12 by Bousseau, David
#Associations variétales #Commercialisation #Coopérative agricole #Cultures associées #Céréales-légumineuses #Triage
paper · doi:10.17180/dj4c-y967
Mixtures of cereals and protein crops and mixtures of varieties are two technical subjects which are presently debated. A large local coop, such as Terrena, must contribute to the discussion, show its commitment in the present experimental works and discuss the tasks to be done. The key points arising from these contributions are that the mixed crops show good and confirmed agronomic performances but induce practical difficulties mainly related to storage, cleaning and marketing. These difficulties are crucial for the final economic return of these mixtures to the farmers. For the mixtures of bread wheat varieties, the benefits on the yield stability over years are obvious, while the advantage on grain yield are more difficult to evidence. Their effects on the disease prevalence in fields must be further documented as well as the consequences on the performance of the industrial processes linked to the rheological properties of the products. Altogether, this underlines the need to complement the agronomic results by economic analyses from the farm scale to the supply chain scale. Terrena is committed to these subjects through various projects.