Soil plant modelling and soil carbon sequestration
Can you introduce yourself? your background?
I am postdoctoral assistant specialized in sustainable crop production and systemic agronomy at different scales (plot, cropping system, and farm). I hold a MSc in agronomy from Bordeaux Sciences Agro and a PhD from the University of Toulouse (INRAE, UMR AGIR). During my PhD I specialized in multi-services (nutrient cycle, biocontrol) enhanced by crucifer and legume cover crops mixtures. I then worked as a postdoctoral assistant at the University of Nebraska where I analyzed the spatio-temporal variability of cropping systems performances in different producing areas of wheat, maize and soybean in the USA. Those different experiences needed skills related to crop experiments, surveys, modeling and geographical information analysis.
What are your objectives in the project?
I will be mostly involved in modelling soil C and N dynamics in tropical cropping systems to explore options for climate change mitigation (task linked to the WP1). More specifically, I will use long-term experiments of selected pilot sites in Kenya, Senegal and Zimbabwe to understand the potential of conservation agriculture to sustain crop production while providing C storage under different managements. To meet that goal I will use crop modelling (parametrization of the STICS soil-crop model and multi model inter-comparison) to efficiently simulate plant growth and soil C and N under conservation agriculture systems in different climates. Model inter-comparison will be carried out with an international group of modelers (AgMIP project) in order to assess the interest of grouping model outputs to identify model improvements. I may also be involved in integrating cropping systems modelling results at the farm level (WP 2). .
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