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Updates on the field work at the Le Petit Bois farm in France

15/03/2021

Within the framework of the H2020 Nutri2Cycle project, the Chamber of Agriculture has implemented field trials in collaboration with the farm « EARL Le Petit Bois » (Thézac, Charente-Maritime – France) to demonstrate the optimal use of organic fertilizers in an organic vineyard.

Data and results of this trial will feed into the research line « Biobased fertilizers (N, P) and soil improvers (OC) from agro-residues », which focuses on recycling on-farm residues.

The farm has two organic production field trails: arable crops and vineyard. It produces and treats oil-seed crops (sunflower, rapeseed, hemp, and camelina) and gets oil-cake as residues.

Farmers in this area aims to have a good combination of Nitrogen and Phosphorus from organic supplies, soil needs and nutrients needed for grapevine. They also want to optimize the balance between C storage and organic fertilization in the soil of grapevine plots.

The field trials are located in a vineyard “Chez Poirier” (0,8 ha) with the test of oil-cake as NP fertilizer combined with the use of a market compost.

In 2019, we defined the “point 0” with the characterization of the oil-cake, to verify its properties as a fertilizer, soil characterization of the plot and a first trial to monitoring the vine production cycle using remote sensing techniques.

In 2020, it was impossible to conduct field trials with the prevailing Covid 19 situation.

In 2021, experiments were divided into 3 parts: field with cake with only oil-cake, field with market compost, and fields with a combination of 50% oil-cake and 50% compost.

The 4^th march, market compost has been spread on the 100% compost area and on the 50-50 area. On the 8^th  march, the oil-cake has been spread on the 50-50 area and on the 100% oil-cake area. The 50-50 area has been spread in two times.

The different areas were flagged by the farmers :

The demonstration vine plot in test shows the three spreading areas :

• At north, the aera “100OCa” – 0,15 ha – with only oil-cake at the rate of 1,5 t/ha;
• In the center, the area “50OCa-50Co” – 0,35 ha – with 1,5 t/ha compost and 0,75 t/ha oil-cake;
• At south, the area “100Co” – 0,33 ha – with only compost at the rate of 3 t/ha.