Alley Coppice. An innovative agroforestry system that combines timber and energy wood production

The push towards combating climate change and greenhouse gas emissions and reducing our dependency on non-renewable energy sources has never been more topical.. Therefore, it is necessary decreasing the human pressure on natural forests, posing also the trilemma among timber/food/bioenergy production on agricultural land. Agroforestry and Short Rotation Coppice (SRC) are recognised as economically viable and sustainable as separate cropping systems. Little is known about agricultural and ecological interactions which might occur combining them in a tree-based intercropping system. This mixed approach, called alley coppice, has important advantages: (i) a regular income guaranteed from the SRC component; (ii) in mixed systems, light competition between species can often improve the stem form of timber trees, reducing the pruning intensity; (iii) timber trees can be planted at the final spacing, avoiding expansive thinning; (iv) SRC component protects timber trees from damages caused from wind and storm during the first years of timber tree growth; (v) alley coppice is expected to have positive ecological impacts, increasing biodiversity and reducing soil erosion; (vi) including SRC in Agroforestry rotation can prevent from future intercrop problems, i.e. depletion of soil nutrients. This approach is being assessed within the European research project AGROCOP (Woodwisdom-Eranet EUPF7; http://www.agrocop.com/). It involves seven research institutes from five countries: France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, United Kingdom. One of our research objectives is to evaluate the yield of alley coppice system in comparison to monocultural systems, using Land Equivalent Ratio index (LER). We also focus on water, nutrient and light competition.. Results presented were obtained in a seven-years old experimental field, located in Northern Italy. It is a plantation of Pyrus and Sorbus as timber tree , mixed with poplars grown in a two-year rotation cycle. We analized yield and survival rate of SRC poplars, leaf phenology and stem shape of timber trees.