Plantes, peuplements cultivés et territoires

Abstract

Agricultural territories are structured in relation with the different goals assigned to agriculture. These goals are related to (i) economy of farms and integrated chains of production, (ii) environmental impacts, (iii) natural resource preservation, (iv) quality of products, (v) landscape management and rural development. Each of these objectives need to be analysed within different functional spatial entities each of them imposing specific evaluation criteria for crops at field scale level. Thus it is necessary to develop a multi-criteria analysis of crop functioning taking into account a wider range of environmental constraints. In such a new context, the evaluation of new cultivars offered to farmers should be based also on a large multi-functional analysis. Models based on an explicit individual plant functioning within plant populations become necessary for interpreting the "genotype by environment by crop management" interactions in a functional way leading to the identification of regulations of genes expressions.