Abstract
Above- and belowground pests and pathogens are major problems for sustainable food production. Global economic developments have resulted in narrowed crop rotation schemes, enlarged field sizes, and simplified habitats, which favor the incidence of pests and pathogens and increase the need for chemical crop protection. EU-legislation stimulates plant-species diverse crop margins, green fallow and other alternatives for long rotation cycles and intercropping, but some are effective for aboveground pests and pathogens, and others for belowground enemies. The question is how to integrate agricultural biodiversity measures, so that they improve both above- and belowground crop protection. The aim of the present proposal is to evaluate consequences of agricultural biodiversity measures for crop protection against above- and belowground pests and pathogens in conjunction, and to assess their socio-economic feasibility. We will integrate and synthesize results from three former Dutch Biodiversity Programme projects, model studies on natural plant-enemy interactions and farm-scale stake-holder experiments. The interdisciplinary proposal combines modelling, empirical meta-analysis, and a socio-economic assessment. Postdoc 1 performs an empirical meta-evaluation using soils from biodiversity trials to investigate how plant species diversity, plant functional diversity, and soil amendments, influence soil suppressiveness against below-aboveground invertebrate herbivores and pathogens. Postdoc 2 develops an above-belowground food-chain model based on recent studies and integrates the results of the meta-analysis of Postdoc 1 in relation to crop protection. With Plant Research International, end users and stake holders, we evaluate the socio-economic feasibility of enhanced above-belowground crop protection by agricultural soil biodiversity measures in relation to farmers? income and EU-legislation.
Netherlands