Agriculture has to product more and better in a more constraint and changing world. In the tropics, agriculture is represented by a majority of familial small-scale mixed farming systems (MFS), which represent half of the world food production. These MFS could be characterised by agrobiodiversity and crop-livestock integration (CLI). Indeed, it is commonly accepted that agrobiodiversity - diversity of production activities on the same farm - is a pre-required for risk management and biodiversity. Moreover, CLI - agroecological complex integrated management between crop and livestock production - seems to be determinant too. By improving resiliency and efficiency of the whole farming system, CLI appears to be able to deal with the need for ecological intensification of agriculture, to produce more with less. Through a review of scientific literature, we identify research approaches concerning MFS and the key role of CLI for a sustainable development. Many studies deal with CLI and MFS, through strategic and methodological approaches, descriptive analysis or analytical case studies. However, few studies concerns systemic analysis of CLI and MFS. Indeed, studies concern the theoretically benefits of CLI integration, the systemic analysis of a specific CLI practice or the inventory of CLI in a geographic area. The fundamental link between farms structures, the potential of integration, the effective integrated functioning and the performances of the system, stay partially treated in the literature. All these elements bring us to revise research posture to understand the key role played by CLI to meet new agricultural aims. A framework to guide future researches is finally proposed, through a comparative analysis of CLI in three territories of the humid tropics (Guadeloupe, Cuba, Brazil), characterised by contrasted socioeconomic situations.