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Fruit and vegetables occupy a privileged place in diets and are crops with a high level of greening issues, given their high input use. The challenge of the UMT SI-BIO is to support the transition of these food systems and horticultural systems to organic farming (AB).
The PACA region is the leading region in France in terms of fruit and vegetable production, and also the leading region in terms of the proportion of usable agricultural area under organic farming in France (23.2% at the end of 2017). It brings together many actors involved in issues specifically dedicated to the development of organic farming and its systems, with a strong focus on horticultural systems. They represent a continuum of professions: production, research, experimentation, development, training, and themes that make it possible to address all dimensions of agri-food systems, from upstream production (genetic selection, for example) to human health.
The UMT SI-BIO "Understanding, co-designing, evaluating and developing innovative organic horticultural systems in synergy" received approval from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food on 1 January 2019 for a period of 5 years. Its programme aims to develop knowledge, methods and tools to strengthen the capacities of AB stakeholders to improve and control the performance of organic horticultural systems and to facilitate transitions to such systems. To this end, the project aims to promote the emergence of joint R&D projects to support and strengthen the development of organic farming along four axes.

•     Axis A - Transitions to AB: analysis of the conditions for change
•     Axis B - Co-design and evaluation of organic horticultural systems
•     Axis C - Functioning and management of organic horticultural agroecosystems
•     Transversal axis - Animation of interactions and valorisation of results