Within the UMRT, team 3 brings together researchers from ULg (Gembloux AgroBioTech campus and Arlon Environment campus), Junia and INRAE Laon.

The research questions of this team involve two main axes:

• Steering and cultivation systems and optimizing cultivation techniques within these systems
• The design of innovative cropping systems, through the production of agronomic, and a fortiori economic, and environmental performance indicators.

 To answer these questions, the team will focus on:

• Object of research: The new knowledge acquired on the ecophysiology of the individual plant (team 1) will be considered to improve the understanding of its functioning in populations.
• Scale: The scale of the research will go from the plant (team 1 and 2) to the environment, and from the growing season to the rotation, thus covering large spatial and temporal scales
• Tools: The tools used will consist of databases (acquired over time and space), proxy- and remote-sensing, as well as soil-plant-atmosphere modelling.

In order to initiate the work of team 3, ULg-GxABT and Junia, with the technical support of INRAE Laon, decided to finance a thesis under joint supervision. It will start in January 2020 and will focus on:

Modeling the agronomic and environmental impacts of wheat fertilization on the scale of Wallonia and Hauts-de-France and highlighting the potential and advantages of precision farming in this territory.

In addition to the objective announced in the title, this thesis will also focus on the deployment of the STICS culture model on the spatial scale of Hauts-de-France and Wallonia, in order to offer UMRT researchers a research and analysis tool.

Finally, other research projects, carried out in parallel with this first thesis and in line with its achievements, or based on the tools that will be developed there, will complement the research of team 3 in the years to come.