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Agroecology and ecological engineering for pest management. Cotton protection as a case study

Deguine J.P., Russell D., Ferron P.. 2008. In : World Cotton Research Conference 4 : Lubbock, United-States, September 10-14, 2007. Madison : Omnipress. World Cotton Research Conference. 4, 2007-09-10/2007-09-14, Lubbock (Etats-Unis).

This synthesis provides an annotated guide to the thinking and publications behind the evolution of concepts in cotton pest management over the last fifty years. The first movement was from the concepts of Pest Control to those of Integrated Pest Management (IPM). It was soon appreciated that advantage needed to be taken of the beneficial aspects of agro-ecological biodiversity, leading to concepts of Agro-Ecological Engineering. This required action beyond the immediate cotton field and of many players other than the recommending scientist. Area-wide and Community-based management, incorporating the lessons learnt from Farmer Field Schools (FFS) made this a more genuinely participatory process. It soon became apparent that biodiversity in itself does not deliver improved pest management and the practice of Landscape Farming came to involve the manipulation of spatio-temporal crop geometries, in turn leading to Better Cotton Management Practices (BMPs) aiming to capitalise on functionally useful biocomplexity rather than simple biodiversity as such and explicitly incorporating wider environmental concerns. More recent developments along this pest management continuum include the idea of New Cotton Cultivation (NCC) emphasising the interactions between the plant, the technical context and the natural and sociological environment of particular cultivators. With improvements in our understanding of the scale and complexity of the practices required to optimise cotton production systems we will continue to move towards more genuinely sustainable and lower physical-input systems.

Mots-clés : gossypium

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