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Scientists from INRAE (Audre Alignier, Colette Bertand and Jacques Baudry fromt the BAGAP unit) and the CNRS, working with colleagues from Germany, Spain, the UK and Canada, have been looking at how crop diversity and field-border length (smaller fields have proportionately longer borders) can enrich plant species in farmland. Their study, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology and based on findings from 1,451 agricultural sites, shows that increasing field border lengths could be a highly effective measure to complement agri-environmental schemes, maintaining and restoring plant diversity right to the centre of fields.

Véronique Chable gave a seminar at Berkeley University in California (USA): A European network to foster organic food systems, cultivated diversity and multi-actor/transdisciplinary research. She was invited by Marianna Fenzi (post doc) and Miguel Altieri (professor) of Department of environmental science, policy and management. Marianna had initiated her PhD with our group in 2010.

The DIVERSIFOOD Final Congress will be held in Rennes on 10-12 December 2018. 120 participants from Europe, the USA, and Ghana — researchers, farmers and actors for cultivating diversity and food quality — are expected. DIVERSIFOOD is an international project funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme. By integrating existing networks across Europe, the project will cover the whole food chain: from genetic resources to marketing, and strengthen the “food culture” to achieve local high quality food systems.