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Promoting sustainable agriculture for pollinators

Project description

Protecting pollinators for future farming

Pollinators play a crucial role in global agriculture, yet they face severe threats from habitat loss, pesticide use and climate change, jeopardising food security and ecosystem health. In this context, the EU-funded AGRI4POL project will transform agriculture from a burden on pollinators into a beneficial force for biodiversity. By enhancing scientific understanding of the relationships between crop farming systems and pollinators, AGRI4POL will identify crop varieties that attract and support these vital species. The project also explores how agricultural practices and landscape features can optimise pollinator services. Through collaborative efforts with farmers, policymakers and stakeholders, AGRI4POL seeks to promote pollinator-friendly practices, aligning with sustainability goals and contributing to the EU’s Green Deal.

Objective

Threats to pollinators and pollination services that support agriculture and provide benefits to people are a worldwide problem. AGRI4POL’s ambition is to assist the transition of agriculture from being a pressure on pollinators to becoming a positive force for managing and restoring pollinator biodiversity, crop pollination services, and co-benefits to ecosystems and people. To achieve this transition towards more pollinator friendly farming systems and value chains, AGRI4POL will advance scientific understanding of crop-farming system-pollinator relationships from the crop gene to the agroecosystem. By evaluating the genetic basis of crop floral traits attracting and rewarding crop pollinators, we will identify candidate crop lines suitable for breeding future pollinator-smart varieties. We will study how pollinator-crop relationships are modified in space and time, by the diversity and rotation of crop species and varieties, by ecological infrastructure (EI) comprising landscape features and non-crop habitats, and by future climate or land-use change. Synthesising this information from the gene to agroecosystem scale will allow us to provide integrated recommendations for optimising landscapes for crop pollination, pollinator biodiversity and multiple ecosystem benefits. AGRI4POL research will be framed and supported by early and sustained multi-actor engagement along agri-food chains to assure its relevance and the acceptability of management options to farmers and society. This multi-actor approach will also enable assessments of the socio-economic and policy obstacles and opportunities affecting the feasibility and uptake of pollinator-friendly farming at [sub]national, European and international scales. AGRI4POL will therefore showcase to farmers, agri-food actors, policymakers and society the importance of pollinator-friendly farming to food security and sustainability goals (EC Green Deal, Nature Restoration Law; UN SDGs).

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Coordinator

INSTITUT NATIONAL DE RECHERCHE POUR L'AGRICULTURE, L'ALIMENTATION ET L'ENVIRONNEMENT
Net EU contribution
€ 1 059 570,00
Address
147 RUE DE L'UNIVERSITE
75007 Paris
France

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Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris
Activity type
Research Organisations
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Total cost
€ 1 059 570,00

Participants (17)

Partners (5)