Bridging Research and Society's Needs in Agriculture. Application to the Rubber Tree

Agriculture is currently in transition, as it has to face different global challenges such as climatic change, transitions to new cropping areas and enhanced environmental awareness of the society. Economic development also results in drastic changes in labor structure, availability and cost. Research has therefore more topics to address than in a recent past, requiring more and more multi-disciplinary research approaches to take into account this increasing complexity. For instance, setting up “Good Agricultural Practices” (GAP) or Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) for ensuring crop sustainability in such a changing environment (climate, soils, environmental and social changes) must address simultaneously the social, environmental and productive aspects. Linear vertical proposal of practices is unlikely to be adopted by stakeholders and relies now on prior dialogues between all stakeholders (producers, transformers, buyers, NGOs, civil society…) under much more participative approaches, in order to get a better understanding of the rationale (priorities and constraints) of all stakeholders involved in the value chain. Regarding the rubber tree, climatic, economic, environmental and social changes in the value chain already had and will have in the future stronger and stronger impacts on the commodity and therefore on the research to set up to address planters, processors and also end-users priorities and constraints. Already, the production of the land (kg/ha) is not anymore, in most of rubber producing countries, the most important yield parameter, as availability or cost of the tapping manpower has already become the most important production limiting factor. The recent raise in environmental awareness of the society and the raise of new environmental norms (FSC, SNRI…) also modify the production conditions in an ecological way. Decrease of inputs like pesticides or fertilizers, respectively judged responsible for health issues or pollutions, leads to the need to develop a “cleaner” agriculture based on the principles of agro-ecology but maintaining the yield performances. Economic resilience to commodities price fluctuations has also to be in front of research priorities. Research has therefore to be structured in order to coordinate all scientific disciplines (molecular physiology and genomics, plant physiology, ecophysiology, agronomy, pathology and crop protection, climatology and soil science, technology and processing, socioeconomics and environmental impact assessment) to propose integrated optimized practices adapted to all stakeholders of the value chain and to address those challenges.

Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Gohet, Eric
Format:	conference_item biblioteca
Language:	eng
Published:	Thai Society for Biotechnology
Online Access:	http://agritrop.cirad.fr/589610/ http://agritrop.cirad.fr/589610/1/3.%20Template%20for%20abstract%20GOHET.pdf
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