Organic Innovation DaysChristian HUYGHE, Scientific Director Agriculture, INRA, France. Pesticide issues in Europe and France: scientific evidence •Protection of crops against weeds,

Organic Innovation Days

27 November, Brussels

Towards a pesticide-free agricultureChristian HUYGHE, Scientific Director Agriculture, INRA, France

Pesticide issues in Europe and France: scientific evidence• Protection of crops against weeds, pests and

diseases: a real need to ensure competitiveness and secure quality of plant products

• Availability of pesticides, at low prices• intensive farming systems and more homogenous farming

landscapes

• deleterious environmental impacts:biodiversity and water quality

Winter wheat yield gap due to fungi. Urruty et al, 2016

• An increasing concern of their impact on human health: emergence of the exposome concept

Skylark

Concentration totale en pesticides, en moyenne, en 2014, selon les unités hydrographiques et hydrogéologiques

Champ : France entière.Sources : agences et offices de l’Eau ; BRGM, banque ADES et BDLisa ; Meem, BDCarthage®. Traitements : SOeS, 2017

Eaux de surface par sous-secteur hydrographique de la BD

Carthage

Eaux souterraines par ent té hydrogéologique du niveau

supérieur de la BD Lisa

Pesticide issues in Europe and France: social evidence• A strong demand of society and consumers

for new production systems with low pesticide uses and no pesticide residues

• Pesticide uses and agricultural models are at a high position in the society and policy agendas: cf the glyphosate issue

• To be combined with other environmental performances expected from agriculture (nitrates, carbon and climate change, biodiversity)

Willingness to pay for variouswines (Y. Raineau, PhD, 2018)

Demonstration in Brussels, November 2017

WP

mea

n. (

€)

Blind FTI Conv/Org Residues

Org Resistant

High levels of contamination of waterConcentration totale en pesticides, en moyenne, en 2014, selon les unités

hydrographiques et hydrogéologiques

Champ : France entière.Sources : agences et offices de l’Eau ; BRGM, banque ADES et BDLisa ; Meem, BDCarthage®. Traitements : SOeS, 2017

Eaux de surface par sous-secteur hydrographique de la BD

Carthage

Eaux souterraines par ent té hydrogéologique du niveau

supérieur de la BD Lisa Surface water - 2014 Underground water - 2014

Source: SOeS, 2017

A slowly improvingsituation

Evidence of relationships with human health

• Evidence of relationships• Parkinson: Gunnarsson and Bodin, 2017

• Diabetis: Jaacks et al, 2015Velmurugan, 2017

• Exposition through food• Baudry 2017 and 2018

• Kesse-Guyot et al, 2017

• Complex mechanisms

• Cocktail effects: • Difficulties to predict cocktail effects

• Rizatti et al, 2016

17

48

35

Situation (%)

No interaction Dose addition Interaction

71% of synergy

Pesticide and human health: an issue to revisit through microbiota. Soil, plant and vertebrate microbiota are linked

Flandroy et al (2018) Sci Tot Env 627, 1018-1038

Reconstitute gutmicrobiota of germ-free mice with soil

microbiota

Seedorf et al (2014) Cell 159, 253

Young vertebrates eat soil

Ngure et al (2013) Am J Trop Med Hyg89, 709Troyer (1984) Behav Ecol Sociobiol 14, 189

Pesticide-free is the key option• A reduction by a few % units will not solve the health and environmental issues

• A path-dependency would hinder major changes in production systems

• This very challenging objective will require to mobilize all possibilities of the ESR scale (Hill and Mac Rae, 1995)• E for Efficiency• S for Substitution• R for Redesign

• And beyond: co-design with farmers and end-users (multi-actors and Living Labs approaches)

• Based upon the C-K theory (Hatchuel, Le Masson and Weil, 2009), what are the assumed invariants that could be unlocked?• Still producing the same products in the same quantities ? The wine example!• Still focussing on individual crops? Why not thinking the whole crop rotations !• Plant-animal productions interactions

New paradigms emerged, offering new possibilitiesin crop protection, requiring more research

• Agroecology (Wezel et al, 2009): • Crops may be regarded as agroecosystems

• Biological regulations within an agroecosystem may provide ecosystemic services, including the regulation of pest and diseases

• Plant-Plant interaction, as a possibility to control weeds

• Agroecosystems with more functional diversity lead to more biological regulations• Pest control

• Plant nutrition and access to nutrients


• Biological control (biocontrol)• Microbiomes and holobionts

• Plants are hosting complex microbial communities on their leaves and roots. A disease outbreak may be regarded as a disequilibrium of these communities

• New molecular and digital techniques give access to these communities and their functions

• Chemical ecology• Insect behaviour is strongly determined by the volatile chemical environments

• Sexual confusion

• Detection of their hosts


• Plant immunity• Genetic resistance to pest and disease Sustainable management of genetic resistance

• Digitalisation in agriculture• Sensors for detection of plant stress status and for detecting crop heterogeneities

• Algorithms, artificial intelligence and deep learning

• Robotics

• New paradigms in socio-economy• Lock-in

• Nudges

Plant immunity

From Geels et al, 2012

To reach a pesticide free agriculture, four principles to beimplemented

• Prophylaxis instead of curative approach: reducing the infestation potential• Management techniques (sowing date and density)

• Genetic resistance/tolerance of varieties and seed quality

• Avoiding reseeding of weed seeds and reduction of soil weed seed bank

• Limiting pathogen inoculum

• Agroecology

• Complexification of production systems

• Whole value chain approaches


• Prophylaxis instead of curative approach: reducing the infestation potential

• Agroecology• Maximizing the functional diversity to maximise the biological regulations

• At the various scales, from field to landscape

• In time: crop rotations, including intermediate companion crops

• Soil health as a component of agroecology and a source of biological regulations

• Biocontrol (including microbiome) designed in an agroecological approach

• Weeds as a component of the functional diversity? (Muneret et al, 2018, Nature Sustainability 1, 361-368)





• Agroecology

• Complexification of production systems• Complexity will become the rule

• Mixtures of varieties and species• Relay-crops• Agroforestry

• Systemic approaches• How to avoid that complexity becomes complicated and source of risk

aversion?




• Agroecology


• Whole value chain approaches• Production from more complex swards will be more heterogenous. How to

use it to generate added value?

• Traceability

• Adapted public policies

Controlling scab (Venturia inequalis) in apple

Primary infection

Winter survival

Secundaryinfections

Spore germination

Spore dissemination

Spore formation

Persistency on infected leaves

Colonizationof host tissue

Spore formation

Colonizationof host tissue

Spore germination

Spore dissemination

Protection against rain

Open sward

Mixture of varieties or

species

Microorganisms to degrade leaf litter

Collecting or buryingdead leaves Genetic resistance

Defense stimulatingsubstances

Natural biocide

Antagonisticmicroorganisms

Adapted from Andrivon et al, 2018, Inra collective scientific expertise

Some success stories

• Inter-cropping winter rapeseed with annual frost susceptible legumes• No herbicide in autumn and winter

• 40-60 kg of N provided by the legumes

• No insecticide against cabbage stem flea beetle (Psylliodes chrysocephalus) in autumn (chemical ecology)

• Mixing winter rapeseed variety with a very early flowering variety (95/5)• No insecticide against Meligethes aeneus, a pollen

beetle grazing flower buds and completing its single cycle on the early variety

Jouffray-Drillaud ©

(From Lorin et al, 2015)

Some success stories

• Breeding vine varieties for resistance againstdowny and powdery mildew through genepyramiding• Exploring the genetic diversity within the Vitis genus

• From an average of 13 fungicides down to 2

• Sexual confusion against Eudemis and Cochylis in vineyards using pheromons• No insecticide

• Improved efficiency when implemented at a large scale(collective management)

Resistantcultivars

Integrated pest

management

Organicproduction

Treatment Frequency IndexMean 2012-2015

Reduction in comparison to mean local practices

Research in farming systems

• Changes in crops and farming systems• Inter-cropping, co-cropping and living mulchs

• Mixtures (with legumes) in annual crops

• Mixtures (with legumes) in grasslands

• Agroforestry

• Landscape design

1 TRL 9

Verret et al, 2017, Field Crops Research

.019

Design module 1 ‘pest suppressive’

Module 1—Planting February 2018

Module 1(1.6 ha)

Experimental zone «Z project» ~ 10 ha

Gotheron Experimental Unit

Google map

First achievements in setting new landscape structures in orchards

Research in biological control

• Biological control. Four domains with contrasting perspectives• Macro-organisms (parasitoids, SIT)

• Micro-organisms

• Pheromons

• Natural substances

1 TRL 9

Research in genetics

• Genetics and plant breeding• Introducing new species for new services

(inter-cropping, mulches)• Genomic selection (speeding up breeding)• Genome editing• Preserving genetic resources• Participatory breeding

• Change in the breeding paradigm of variety structure• From pure lines or hybrids to populations, chosen to maximise disease

resistance• Breeding for mixtures

• Seeds will carry an ecosystem: plant genotype + adapted microbiom

1 TRL 9

• Machinery and Digitalisation: • Capturing heterogeneities

• Detecting plant stress status and emergence of pests

• In Machinery, a system in transition • From a logics of power and size increase to a logics of increasing

functionalities

• Increasing decision automations: robots and autonomous modules (self-guidance)

• Strong connections between machinery and digital

• Digitalisation: an exogenous innovation• More sensors

• Computation and artificial intelligence

• High throughput networks

• Emergence of new players

Research in agroequipments and digitalisation

d2d11

First visible apple scabsymptoms at d11

First signs of apple scabdetected by sensors at d2

Setting new designs for experiments Adoption and transition

• Farmers groups and farm networks• Farms from the French Ecophyto design (3000 farms)• Sharing among countries, including through Operational

Groups of EIP-Agri• How to learn from these designs?

• Identifying what is generic and what is specific to local conditions

• Technical and sociological limitations to achieve 0-pesticides

• Transition at farm level

• Living labs • Gathering fundamental and applied research,

economic stakeholders and indirect beneficiaries• One on viticulture (Bordeaux region) and one on

agroecological agrifood systems (Burgundy region)• Demonstrators at a large spatial scale.• Towards open innovation ….

Ecophyto farms network

Living labconcept

Value chains and public policies issues• Relationships to markets and value chains

• Uses for the new plant products, as those produced from species mixtures• Willingness to pay and traceability• New contractual organisations • Future CAP: Payment for Environmental/Ecosystem Services (human health, biodiversity, water

quality)

• All breakthroughs will be beneficial to organic farming

• Separation between market and advisory activity

• New policies to target 0-pesticides• Variety registration and more focus on pest resistance• Biocontrol and biopesticide regulations• French system of Pesticide Economy certificates to evidence the favourable levers

• More prospective analyses are needed to document• Monetary value of environmental services• Monetary value of long-term public health benefits

Conclusion

• A very long-term and challenging objective, meeting expectations of society

• Moving research frontiers

• New paradigms recently emerged offering totally new perspectives

• It requires to thoroughly explore reconception and to innovate in technology, organisation and policy

• Much more research is needed• Covering a broad scope of the TRL scale

• With more public-private partnership

• With opportunities of open innovations

• With holistic approaches, from production to food and human health

Documents

Organic Innovation DaysChristian HUYGHE, Scientific Director Agriculture, INRA, France. Pesticide issues in Europe and France: scientific evidence •Protection of crops against weeds,