Botanical inventory in vineyards from the French-speaking part of Switzerland: knowing the vegetation to improve its management | Inventaire floristique des vignes de Suisse romande: connaitre la flore pour mieux la gerer
2006
Clavien, Y.,Universite de Neuchatel, Neuchatel (Switzerland). Laboratoire Sol et Vegetation | Delabays, N.
Presently, ground management in vineyards relies mainly on the use of herbicides. These are very efficient but they raise growing concerns about problems such as water contamination, development of herbicide resistant biotypes and reduction of biodiversity in cultivated fields. Obviously, a better management of the spontaneous vegetation in vineyard is now needed. Yet, the flora of Swiss vineyards is still not well known, as it has not been widely studied. This paper presents a synthesis of a botanical inventory carried out in the different vineyard areas of the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Globally, 211 species have been observed but the majority of them are not very frequent. On the contrary relatively few species are really frequent: only 25 species have been found in more than half of the fields studied. The inventory also distinguished between different soil managements: cover cropping, mechanical management, herbicide applications. Species richness is higher in field with ground cover than in weeded plots and it tends to decrease with intensification.
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