Describing Agroforestry Systems with High Value Trees: A Summary

Ten stakeholder groups across Europe have produced system descriptions of the components, structure, ecosystem services, and economic value of selected agroforestry systems that involve the grazing or intercropping of fruit orchards, olive groves, or chestnut or walnut plantations. Professor Anastasia Pantera is the leader of work-package 3 and with colleagues she has produced a synthesis of the ten reports. The individual system description reports are also available on the appropriate website.

Pantera, A., Burgess, P.J., Corroyer, N., Ferreiro-Domínguez, N., Fernández Lorenzo, J.L., González-Hernández, P., Graves, A., Malignier, N., McAdam, J., Moreno, G., Mosquera-Losada, M.R., Rigueiro Rodríguez, A., Rosati, A., Upson, M., van Lerberghe, P. (2016). Agroforestry for High Value Trees: Synthesis of System Descriptions. Deliverable 3.7 (3.1) for EU FP7 Research Project: AGFORWARD 615320. June 2016. 10 pp. (Download the report here).

Three of the systems comprise the grazing of apple orchards with a replicated field experiment in Northern Ireland (McAdam and Ward, 2015), a field demonstration in Normandie in France (Corroyer, 2016) and a field demonstration and some modelling work in Herefordshire in England (Burgess et al., 2016). Three of the systems comprise the intercropping or grazing of olive groves. There is one group in Italy (Rosati and Mantovani, 2015), one group based in Molos in Central Greece (Pantera et al., 2016a) and a group based in Chalkidiki in Northern Greece (Mantzanas et al., 2015). The other group based in Greece is focused on intercropping between oranges in Crete (Pantera et al., 2016a).

There are two groups in Spain that are studying contrasting systems. Fernández Lorenzo et al. (2016) describe the development of mushrooms within a chestnut system; Moreno et al. (2015) describe the use of grazing and the use of legumes within walnut plantations. The last group is focused on the management and use of pollarded trees in the Pyrenees in South-West France (van Lerberghe and Malignier, 2016).