Synthèses

Rupicolous environments include rock faces, coastal cliffs, screes, bare and stony soils of proglacial surfaces and also quarries and ore dumps. This book presents the riches of rupicolous environments, explains how they operate as ecosystems in relation with their media, explains their heritage interest as a species repository and innovation laboratory, discusses how to restore them and advocates their integrated and sustainable management.

The work presents a sociological and historical analysis of transformations in French agriculture since the Second World War. The author shows that some farmers continue to invent unusual productive forms that withstand the on-going extension of industrial agriculture. The work has six chapters and can be a medium for teaching the history of French agriculture.

How can cultivated plant biodiversity contribute to the transformation and the "ecologisation" of agriculture in Southern countries? Based on extensive field work in the Southern countries, a great deal of scientific progress is presented in all areas affecting agriculture (agronomy, plant breeding and crop protection, cultivation systems, etc.) in order to intensify the ecological processes in cultivated plots and at the scale of rural landscapes.

From the receivers to consumer behaviour and biological control and beyond that, towards the future bio-electronic applications, this book takes stock of current knowledge on the reception and processing of olfactory and taste messages and their biological and social implications.

The work analyses the transformations of farmer societies and organisations in several continents from a dual socio-economic interpretation that combines the classic logic of mercenary exchange with the viewpoint of the logic of reciprocity.

Urged on by new expectations of society, key rural players experiment with different agricultural and food systems, showing proof of creativity and stubbornness faced with the ever-dominant mass production.But what type of sustainable development are societies seeking? How do we choose the innovations to achieve it? What role can research and public policies play to support the emergence of these innovations?

Meadows cover almost a quarter of the globe's land surface, in which grasses dominate. The very special nature of the development of grasses fully justifies the need for a book on the topic. This summary sets out to describe the specific characteristics of vegetative development of grasses at both plant and herbaceous population scale.

An essential component of our environment, the soil is nowadays viewed as a natural heritage. The author describes the spread, properties and functioning of main soils in large physiographic and pedological areas in France along with their pedogenetic evolution. He makes an inventory of different types of sequence and soil-system.

This book lays out the physicochemical and biochemical mechanisms of photosynthesis.