“Community Ecology and Digital Tools to Enhance Natural Pest Control in Agriculture”
Understanding how nature protects crops
The challenge
How can crops be protected from pests while limiting the use of pesticides? Nature offers a solution: many insects and spiders that occur naturally in crops feed on insect pests. However, this natural regulation remains poorly understood and difficult to predict due to the complexity of the biotic interactions involved.
The ambition of the project
The ECOCONTROL project aims to decipher these natural regulatory mechanisms in several fruit crops (citrus fruits, apples, olives, and vegetables in mainland France, Corsica, and Guadeloupe). The objective is to characterize the species of insects and spiders present in these different crops, to predict pest regulation based on agricultural practices and landscaping, and to structure the networks of interactions between species.
An innovative approach
The project studies the complexity of interactions between three trophic levels: plants (cultivated or wild), insect pests (aphids, scale insects, in particular) and their natural enemies (predators and parasitoids). To do this, several technologies are used:
- Artificial intelligence to identify insect species;
- Automatic analysis of scientific articles to characterize the most likely species associations;
- DNA sequencing to determine trophic interactions (who eats whom?);
- Computer modeling to predict natural regulation.
Participatory research
The experiments are being conducted on plots of land belonging to volunteer farmers. Sociological surveys are accompanying the project to identify the needs of professionals and work with them to build a shared platform for monitoring biodiversity in agricultural environments.
Expected benefits
Contribute to the agroecological transition by identifying specific agricultural practices and landscaping measures (hedges, service plants, pesticide reduction, etc.) that can sustainably strengthen natural crop protection.
Project 2025-2029, funded by the ANR
