Dur-Dur

To face the current issues (climate change, prices volatility, regulation changes, and environmental impact decrease), the sustainability of the French durum wheat agrofood chain lies on its capacities of organization, innovation and adaptation. The Dur-Dur project suggests developing a systematic approach to investigate the questions related to the management of the nitrogen, energy and contaminants, to guarantee a global quality of products throughout the production and the transformation chain. Planned over 4 years, this multifactorial approach aims at integrate the 3 dimensions of the durability (environmental, economic, and social), at 4 levels of investigation: (task 1) agronomy, for the production of grains of high quality based on innovative technical ways to reduce the dependence to chemical inputs (nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides) via experiments in silico and in situ; (task 2) technology, with the adaptation of the transformation processes to the protein content and quality of wheat; (task 3) process engineering, for the energetic re-design of equipments ; (task 4) economy, to characterize the strategies of innovation and analyze the behavior of the actors of the agrofood chain and propose actions of coordination. A task of integration by multi-criteria analyses and ACV has the aim of identifying the efficient levers to improve and guarantee the sustainability of the durum wheat agrofood chain (task 5). The project is based on the know-how, skills, technical means, expertise, and complementarity of 6 scientific partners (IATE, AGIR, ARVALIS, GENIAL, PIHM, SMART), 2 technical partners (EVEA and OPTOmachines), and 2 partners representing the professional domain (CFSI and SIFPAF). All the actors of the durum wheat agrofood chain (cooperatives, industrialists, GIE, and plateforme blé dur) are integrated into the project via an advisory board, which will play a role of interface and transfer. The project aims to generate modern scientific and technical knowledge at the service of the innovation: agronomic innovations (to identify innovative technical ways based on a reduction of the use of synthetic inputs and energy, and the substitution ways); product innovations (grains with optimized protein potentials); processes innovations (energetic adaptation of the technological ways); equipments innovations (specifications for the re-design of equipments); coordination innovation of the actors of the chain (organization scenarios). The outputs of the project aim at meeting the expectations of actors of the agrofood chain for 3 issues. 1) Valuation of the scientific works to identify indicators of impacts at the 3 dimensions of the durability (environmental, economic, and social) at the different levels of the agrofood chain: farmers (quantity of the nitrogen inputs, water consumption, production costs), transformers (valuation of the protein potential, energy consumptions and process costs of 1st and of 2nde transformation), and actors of the agrofood chain (organizational models for the management of the "innovations", social aspects). 2) Design of confrontation tools based on the indicators of durability impacts, to elaborate strategies of multi-criteria analysis for equivalent uses, by integrating the levels of the chain (e.g. environmental integrated life cycle analysis). 3) Identification and quantification of the "relevant" levers and of the difficulties to solve, to improve and strengthen the durability of the durum wheat chain, in particular by reducing its energy dependence. The ambitions of the project can be quantified at different levels of the agrofood chain: reduction of the quantities of nitrogen fertilizer (25%), reduction of pesticides at the rotation scale (50%), and reduction of the energy consumptions by the processes (20%). All these actions will contribute to the sustainability of the durum wheat French agrofood chain, by improving its environmental efficiency and by strengthening its competitiveness.