Know more

In addition to the ever-increasing demand for food production adapted to societa expectations, agriculture must contribute to the production of resources for green chemistry, energy and the provision of a wide range of ecosystem services, while adapting to climate change and reducing its environmental footprint. Increasing the autonomy of cropping systems, controlling losses to the environment, identifying crop or cropping system idioms for the sustainable production of biomass for diversified uses are key issues in this context.

Taking these issues into account requires a sustained effort to understand the functioning of the soil-plant-atmosphere system and the associated water, C, N, P and energy cycles, their interactions, the search for adaptation pathways through both the improvement of plants and the optimization of agricultural practices and cropping systems.

It is towards this objective that the efforts of cluster 1 will be focussed, by mobilizing and articulating three major skill sets focusing respectively on:

• The functioning and adaptation of the plant, including interactions with its environment and in particular the soil
• The integrated functioning of the soil-plant system and the resulting exchanges between the ecosystem and the hydrosphere and the atmosphere
• The management, optimization and design of cropping systems meeting multi-criteria objectives.