Riccardo Bommarco

Riccardo Bommarco is full Professor in agricultural entomology at the Swedish university of agricultural sciences (Sweden). His fellowship at the Montpellier Advanced Knowledge Institute on Transitions runs from 8 January 2024 to 30 June 2024.

Biography:

Riccardo Bommarco is full Professor in agricultural entomology at the Department of Ecology of the Swedish university of agricultural sciences (SLU) in Uppsala, Sweden. He holds a MSc in agronomy and a PhD (1997) in agronomy with specialisation in entomology. He is also Professor in ecology. His team focuses on the ecology and agronomy of agricultural ecosystems. His research builds on expertise on population, community and systems ecology of mainly European agroecosystems. He is also engaged in global research collaborations and assessments such as the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

The team explores effects of agricultural land use, e.g. cropping practices, pesticide use, biodiversity conservation, landscape composition and climate on biodiversity – mainly invertebrates and plants. They study how biodiversity drives key ecosystem functions linked to crop production and protection: primary production, herbivory, predation, pollination, decomposition and nutrient cycling. Together with other researchers, farmers and stakeholders, they design cropping systems that to greater extent rely on ecosystem functions generated autonomously and regeneratively within the agroecosystem, to decrease the reliance of external inputs such as mineral fertilisers, chemical pesticides and energy for crop production. The team aims to develop farming and cropping systems that are productive, resource use efficient, reliable, resilient, environmentally friendly and economically sustainable under climate change.

In this effort Bommarco is engaged in interdisciplinary collaborations with natural and social scientists and economists, exploring social-ecological processes and strategies for sustainable development in agricultural policy and food value chains. He takes part in an extensive network of scientists and stakeholders via collaborations in European projects and research alliances, for example the COST action Towards zer0 Pesticide AGRIculture : European Network for sustainability (T0P-AGRI-Network).

Research interests :

• Cropping systems;
• Ecosystem services

Recent publications on Riccardo’s ORCID profile include:

• Costa, A. et al. (2024) ‘Crop rotational diversity can mitigate climate‐induced grain yield losses’, Global Change Biology, 30(5), p. e17298. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17298.
• Daouti, E. et al. (2024) ‘Functional redundancy of weed seed predation is reduced by intensified agriculture’, Ecology Letters, 27(4), p. e14411. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.14411.