Objectives

The SAADA project addresses the possibility of using agrobiodiversity as a lever for the ecological intensification of water use in Mediterranean rainfed agroecosystems. Increasing the cultivated plant diversity within agroecosystems has become the most targeted way of implementing the agroecological transition worldwide. In particular, higher plant functional diversity has been associated to higher functional complementarity leading to more complete and more resilient use of resources, and to promote positive interactions among plants. Yet, despite the high richness of trees and annual crops in the traditional farming systems, the functional agrobiodiversity in the South Mediterranean is still poorly known and used for the design of innovative diversified agroecosystems with high water productivity.

In order to overcome this limitation, the SAADA project will initiate a multidisciplinary research program on the functional agrobiodiversity, within and between agroecosystems in the Pre-Rif region, Northern Morocco.

The main objectives of the project will be:

• to assess agrobiodiversity using both genetic markers and plant functional traits
• to specify how the diversity of crops are combined by farmers into complex agroecosystems
• to test whether the functional diversity of crops or the genetic distance among crops promotes a functional complementarity of water use in crop mixtures.

Using a comparative approach of agrobiodiversity based on field observations, experimental work and modelling activities, the project will provide new basis for the co- definition of crop functional ideotypes and "ideo-mixtures" with high water productivity in the Mediterranean drylands.