Agriculture needs to better balance productivity while minimising negative impacts on the environment for meeting the sustainable development goals. Biodiversity is central for the delivery of important ecosystem services to agriculture such as soil fertility and natural pest control. Viticulture may benefit biodiversity conservation by providing habitats in vineyard inter-rows and by conserving semi-natural landscape elements. On-field management, such as reduced soil tillage and minimised pesticide use, and off-field management, such as the conservation of semi-natural habitats, can enhance the provision of several ecosystem services like pest control or biodiversity conservation.

In five European countries, we investigate how vineyard management (e.g. spraying frequency, ground cover management) and landscape structure (e.g. presence of hedgerows) affect biodiversity conservation and ecosystem service provision in vineyards. The consortium will develop spatially explicit agent-based models on the social-ecological system for viticulture. The aim is to improve the multifunctionality of viticultural landscapes.

Within the project the University of Koblenz-Landau will focus on above-ground biodiversity and ecosystem services. Arthropod pests, their natural enemy communities, and pest control potential will be surveyed in differently managed vineyards. Further, we aim to identify indicators of biodiversity and conservation value, such as spiders, birds, and bats. The results will be used to develop an integrated decision-support tool integrating available risk prognosis tools with new modules consisting of habitat variables like proportion of semi-natural elements in the vicinity of vineyards which could support pest control services.

Sebastian Kolb

Jo Marie Reiff

Verena Rösch

Martin Entling

2019-2022

Belmont Forum

BiodivERsA

European Union

VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik GmbH

Division of Plant Protection, BOKU Vienna, Austria (coordinator) in cooperation with the Institute of Zoology and Institute of Wildlife Biology and Game Management

Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Estacion Experimental del Zaidin (EEZ), Granada, Spain

Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, UMR 1065 SAVE, Santé et Agroécologie du Vignoble (INRA), Bordeaux, France

Julius Kühn-Institute, Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants, Institute for Plant Protection in Fruit Crops and Viticulture, Siebeldingen, Germany

Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Environment and Plant Protection, University of Agriculture Science and Veterinary Medicine Cluj Napoca, Romania

Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology, The Regents of the University of California, Davis, US

University Göttingen, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Göttingen, Germany

Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

Reiff, J.M.; Kolb, S.; Entling, M.H.; Herndl, T.; Möth, S.; Walzer, A.; Kropf, M.; Hoffmann, C.; Winter, S. (2021) Organic Farming and Cover-Crop Management Reduce Pest Predation in Austrian Vineyards. Insects 12:220. doi.org/10.3390/insects12030220

SECBIVIT

Biodiversity, global change, ecosystem function (pest control); vineyards; arthropods, spiders, birds, bats; Europe