EcoOrchard
Innovative design and management to boost functional biodiversity of organic orchards.

The project objectives in brief
- To identify promising techniques, tools and monitoring protocols to improve management of functional biodiversity, which consistently enhance the performance of natural enemies, reduce pest pressure and are adapted to farmers' implementation.
- To assess promising techniques, namely specific flora introduction to provide and optimize supplementary alternative food/prey for natural enemies, and specifically adapted habitat management.
- To create a European-wide network of stakeholders for collecting, sharing and improving scientific and practical knowledge and experience in functional biodiversity management for resilient organic orchards.
- To learn from a participatory approach about potential constraints that may hamper the adoption of innovative tools and how to solve these constraints by iterative re-evaluation.
Read more about the project at ICROFS.
Read more about the EBio-Network.
See a video on FAB techniques.
Find project publications in Organic eprints.
Handbook for Monitoring of functional biodiversity in organic orchards
Project summary May 2018
- Knowledge and experience on Functional AgroBiodiversity (FAB) management both from practitioners and scientists has been collected and are being reviewed based on interviews with farmers (>100) and advisors (>50) in all partner countries, on literature and on workshops with growers, advisors and research were held in France, Sweden and Denmark.
- EBIO-Network platform established and available on http://ebionetwork.julius-kuehn.de/.
- 34 FAB techniques were described and can be divided into 3 categories: long-term ecological infrastructures, dynamic agricultural practices adaptable from a season to another and deeper system redesign requiring strong interactions with the production system such as crop diversification.
- Methods for farmers/advisors own assessment of FAB has been tested by farmers and a handbook for methods is now available in several languages in EBio-Networks page How can I assess FAB.
- Field trials for interrow flower strips in 7 countries was completed in 2017 and results are being published on the effect of flower strips on pests, their natural enemies and crop damage, as well as flower strip establishment.
- Recommendations for farmers made in a technical including e.g. management of flower strips, seed mixtures, necessary restrictions in plant protection management and adapted machinery for implementation and are being translated into partner languages.
- Through the organization of the workshops we achieved to create a space for exchanges about FAB monitoring practices, and we also used those events to favour collective learning about functional biodiversity and monitoring methods.
Project Coordinator
Project Partners
- InHort, Poland
Dorota Kruczyńska
Małgorzata Sekrecka - FiBL, Switzerland
Lukas Pfiffner
Fabian Cahenzli
Claudia Daniel - INRA, France
Marc Tchamitchian
Arnaud Dufils
Servane Penvern - GRAB, France
François Warlop - Julius Kühn-Institut, Germany
Annette Herz - SLU, Sweden
Marco Tasin - VZ-Laimburg, Italy
Markus Kelderer
Josef Telfser - Latvian Plant Protection Research Centre, Latvia
Laura Ozolina-Pole
Baiba Ralle - CRA-W, Belgium
Laurent Jamar - EcoAdvice, Denmark
Maren Korsgaard