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- Ecological Functioning and Sustainable Management of Banana and Pineapple Cropping Systems
Ecological Functioning and Sustainable Management of Banana and Pineapple - UPR GECO
Internal Research Unit (UPR)
PERSYST Department
UR GECO conducts functional agro-ecology research and places its expertise at the disposal of the drive to innovate in partnership so as to improve the environmental, economic and social sustainability of banana and pineapple cropping systems. In the long term, its research aims to support the agro-ecological transition away from intensive monocultures (banana, pineapple), and to contribute to the emergence of resilient cropping systems that perform better in agronomic terms, so as to help ensure food security in southern countries (plantain bananas).
Banana plants associated with Desmodium Ovalifolium, Guadeloupe. H. Tran Quoc, CIRAD
The unit’s research centres on studies of the spatio-temporal organization of crop diversity, with a view to maximizing ecosystem services (studies of the functional biodiversity within multi-species systems), the dynamics of pests and diseases and their trophic networks, the development of functional trait-based approaches for multi-species plant communities, and the design and multi-criteria assessment of innovative, sustainable cropping systems.
Its studies are primarily conducted on a plot or infra-plot scale, but also on a catchment area scale. The unit works in various areas in the South, particularly in the French West Indies and the Caribbean.