Analysis and modeling of emergence success, biomass production potential, and nutrient restitution of cover

Ecole doctorale

SEVAB

Financement

CSC - INRAE

Date de début

Nov 2022

Encadrants

• Jay-Ram LAMICHHANE (UMR AGIR, INRAE Toulouse)
• Lionel ALLETTO (UMR AGIR, INRAE Toulouse)

Résumé

Both France and the North China Plain are concerned by the challenges related to environmental impacts of conventional agricultural practices and the need for designing and adopting sustainable levers to cope with these challenges. Diversification of current cropping systems, via introduction of cover crops, may represent an important agronomic lever to this objective. Because cover crops have the potential to provide almost a dozen of ecosystem services, their introduction into the current cropping systems may improve environmental sustainability while maintaining cash crop yield both in France and the North China Plain. However, a successful establishment of cover crops remain a key challenge as these crops are most often sown under non-optimal conditions (e.g. poorly prepared and too coarse seedbed, water-limited, water-logged or cold soil conditions). A better understanding of cover crop species having the potential to readily establish across contrasted environmental conditions and sowing dates is a pre-requisite to ensure a good amount of biomass production that will finally provide an enhanced ecosystem services to following cash crops. This PhD project aims at testing different cover crop species for their capacity to establish and develop across contrasted environmental conditions of France and the North China Plain under current and future climate. To this aim, we plan to (i) parametrize the SIMPLE model for a range of cover crops species, (ii) conduct simulations under future climate scenarios to assess establishment potential of these cover crops, and (iii) investigate potential correlations between final emergence rates and biomass production potentials of these cover crops. This work will be mainly based on coupling of climate models (for future climate data), a soil-crop model (STICS) and a crop emergence model (SIMPLE). This will allow to provide practical information for farmers concering the optimal cover crop species to be sown in relation to current and future environmental conditions.

Contact

ximei.feng (at) inrae.fr