Multifunctional stripcropping systems to optimize above- and belowground ecosystem services

Currently, monocultures that require constant pesticide and fertiliser inputs to be profitable dominate European agriculture. Alternative cropping systems need to be put in place to make agricultural production more sustainable.

This is particularly important for crops that are difficult to manage without agro-chemicals such as potatoes.A promising strategy to reduce chemical inputs in agroecosystem is to increase crop diversity at the field level.

In particular, the stripcropping approach, the production of two or more crops within the same field in strips wide enough for machinery, appears to be beneficial for yield stability and pest and pathogen control.

However, stripcropping in potato production is still uncommon because knowledge on best practice (e.g. the most effective approaches for pest control and soil fertility) and economic feasibility are lacking.Together with farmers, this project will develop concrete crop management practices to increase crop diversity in potato production systems as well as developing stripcropping practices for Sweden.

This will be achieved by assessing how potato-grass stripcropping affects beneficial and pathogenic organisms in long-term field experiments both above- and belowground. Secondly, I will explore direct and indirect interactions between potato and grass plants.

Finally, the economic feasibility of potato stripcropping at the farm scale and the attitude of farmers towards this approach will be evaluated.