ROOT

The expansion of anaerobic digestion and the challenges of ecological planning in France make energy crops a resource of interest. They could account for 50% of the increase in biogas production by 2030.
  

Numerous national R&D projects have addressed the management of CIVE for over 10 years, as have many regional initiatives. Only a few of these projects have studied the entire crop rotation sequence, a critical aspect for the success of these dual-cropping systems.
Integrating CIVE into cropping systems requires changes in farming practices. 

The challenge is to support these changes in order to optimize agronomic performance while ensuring stable yields. Indeed, in a context of climate change and water scarcity, the development of CIVE must be evaluated in terms of its impacts on soil water supply and on the production of the food crops that follow them.

At the request of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region, the RACYNE project (Characterization of Water Supply in Sequences with CIVE in Nouvelle-Aquitaine) aims to better characterize these effects in order to produce benchmarks and recommendations tailored to the regional context.
 

It is necessary to provide project leaders, farmers, and advisors with technical data on soil and climate conditions, production potential, and the risk of water shortages for each production basin. To this end, this project aims to:
• Collect in situ baseline data on the impacts of these dual-cropping systems on water management and major crops (water requirements, impact on yield, etc.);
•    Study crop rotations and map areas suitable for introducing CIVE without altering the crop rotation;
• Identify agroclimatic indicators of sensitivity to abiotic stresses (including water) for CIVE and the main crops in the rotation;
•    Use modeling to characterize climatic conditions and stress risks according to the soil-climate context for these dual-cropping sequences: risks of water deficit, soil water reservoir status at the time of sowing for the various crops, frequency potential for reservoir replenishment, etc.;
 

The research will be conducted in five production regions: the Pyrenean foothills, the Landes sandlands, the hillsides, valleys, and terraces of the Garonne, Lot, and Dordogne rivers, the Groies region of Charente and Charente-Maritime, and the plains of Deux-Sèvres and Poitou. 
• Characterization of the regions, establishment of agroclimatic sensitivity indicators, and their evaluation for double-cropping sequences;
• Acquisition of fundamental baseline data, under real-world conditions, on water dynamics, water consumption by cover crops, and the impact of CIVE on food crop production.
• Communication and dissemination of these baseline data.