DESIGNING MIXED HORTICULTURAL SYSTEMS

Summary in the original language of the document

The necessary ecologization of agriculture in the developed countries has recently resulted in the research of innovative systems that are both economically viable and environmentally friendly, with sustainable objectives at mid and long terms. The sylvoarable systems, mixing trees and crops on the same plot, are ecologically intensive systems that allow a better use of natural resources, hence increase production on the same land area. The vegetable orchard is a sylvoarable system mixing fruit trees and vegetable crops that disappeared in the 1950’s for economic reasons. Its possible reintroduction becomes a new research topic for ecological purposes, with agronomic bases to ensure its viability.
The vegetable orchards’ agronomic bases are a combination of scientific results and feedback from farmers on the interactions between fruit trees and vegetable crops. These bases are the common knowledge to be harnessed during vegetable orchards’ co-design processes, especially for developing decision-support tools, such as models. A proof of concept is built for modelling the vegetable orchard with constraint satisfaction problems (CSP), proposing layouts of fruit trees and vegetable crops that take maximum advantage of a set of interactions between them. This proof of concept is the core of a more exhaustive model to be built, with CSP formalism or another, which could be used to support the design of systems mixing trees and crops.